G
by Doc0517
Summary: G is Book 4 of the series. It's the follow-on of Saving the Saviors, and finds all of the characters from the show arriving in present day, intact. Several are worse for wear, and more pressure is likely to come. Forces that would take all that is dear to Finch are at work. Some from the show have returned with expanded roles, and new characters from the first book return in G.
1. Chapter 1

**Book 4: G**

**Chapter 28: Revelation and resolution.**

**July 1, 2020**

**Introduction**

Welcome ! Book 4 is starting. We're moving forward from the end of _Saving the Saviors _to newer adventures with the members of Team Machine. They've arrived intact, though that's not to say that all is well...

Book 4 begins with Reese, who's found it within himself to allow some help. He's been guided to someone who knows what it takes to be a Warrior, someone who understands the choices he made - and who uses unorthodox methods to reach and re-interpret the trauma. But, only Reese can choose if he's ready to begin the healing path.

The D.C. Team returns, minus one, just in time to help with a new case. Root and Shaw are up to their necks in it already.

Lionel is a little worse for wear from his last run-in with Greer's soldier-elite.

And the Machine notices something different about Harold lately.

Author's preface:

As usual, just a bit of orientation for those who might want it. This is the fourth book of a series that began with _Saving the Saviors_. Think of that one as bookends around _Pointillist_ and _Pointillist 2 (P2). _

It jumped back and forth in time between the years 2014 and late 2016. Book 1 imagined a different ending to the TV series, and it showed, instead, what it would take to bring back the people we loved from all the losses they'd suffered. Book 1 brought back characters from the show in expanded roles, and it introduced a few new ones to help with the plot.

We all knew that there was such richness to this story, so many chapters left unwritten. So, _Saving the Saviors_ was the first step in erasing that ending, and visualizing a better world where these characters could move on, together.

Welcome to G, the next helping of the feast.

In continuing deep love and appreciation for the ground-breaking work of the original show, and all of those who made it so unique. Let's keep going.

March, 2019

* * *

**Table of Contents**

* * *

Part 1:

**Chapter 1**: Introduction, Table of Contents and Works cited

**Chapter 2**: on his way

**Chapter 3**: The dark and the cold

**Chapter 4**: too deep; what was he going to do? (rated T)

**Chapter 5**: flight; not over

**Chapter 6**: night sky; familiar somehow; a killer

**Chapter 7:** For a long time, he drifted (rated T); open his eyes, and see

**Chapter 8:** It's you; Don't question the mission (rated T); beginning to seep in

**Chapter 9**: Familiar; the ring; moving meditation; two could play at that game; _the Way... is the Way..._

_Part 2:_

**Chapter 10: **something very new; "Bless your heart."; Too bad about him; "We'll be okay."

**Chapter 11: **men in black; unruly step-child; They just had to get there;

**Chapter 12: **through the pain; cover; Blood; two of our Team; until night time;

**Chapter 13:** gagged; refuge in the Bronx;

**Chapter 14: **sniper?; back off; who the hell was she?; leave it for the police;

**Chapter 15**: nowhere; under the overpass; incoming wounded; 222

**Chapter 16: **or something brute force; as he waited for wounded; she was aware;

**Chapter 17:** Predator. Prey nearby (rated T).

**Chapter 18: **expecting him; eyes of the doe;

_Part 3:_

**Chapter 19: **two guests; Two a second

**Chapter 20: **the friends I told you about; number three;

**Chapter 21: "**No worse, Mr. Reese."

**Chapter 22:** the choices he'd made (rated T for adult situations);

**Chapter 23:** Her first day. (rated T)

**Chapter 24:** Maybe she was supposed to bow. (mild language)

**Chapter 25: **Right there in his eyes; _Acceptance;_ slow and steady (rated T);

**Chapter 26**: A heavy burden, indeed; sight-line;

**Chapter 27**: _vintovka,_ rifle

**Chapter 28**: all in white (rated T for adult situations);

* * *

**Works Cited**

* * *

Music and other works important in this story will be cited here, for your own journey. Enjoy.

Chapter 2: in on his way, Reese had already received this book as a gift from Jules, to help him re-connect with his authentic self and the Warrior's Way. It re-surfaces again in G:

Kaufman, Stephen. _The Martial Artist's Book of Five Rings_, Tuttle Publishing, 1994.

And, look for the line across the page to queue this short, beautiful instrumental, from Paul Simon:

Simon, Paul._"_In The Garden of Edie." _Stranger to Stranger_, Concord Records, 2016

Chapter 3: in The dark and the cold, Reese makes a return visit to Jules before she leaves, and she plays this in the background during her session with him. It is an example of Alpha brainwave entrainment:

Walder, Russel. "Wisdom Calls When the Wall Falls." _Bruce Lipton's Music for a Shift in Consciouness_, Sounds True, 2011

Chapter 4: in what was he going to do?, Reese relives a harrowing time in the Rangers. It is stuck inside him, swirling around him like the snake in this music, haunting:

Walder, Russel. "Walking Among the Snakes." _Bruce Lipton's Music for a Shift in Consciouness_, Sounds True, 2011

Chapter 5: in flight, Jules must go after Reese as he descends into darkness. She uses the sounds of this piece to help her reach him in time:

Kater, Peter. "Echo Inside." _Resonance,_ New Earth Records, 2016.

and in not over, Reese wakes to find himself in Jules' living room, rescued. As she watches him recover from his haunting memory, she begins to see what needs to be done. Share the resonance of that moment with them in this piece, from Peter Kater, too:

Kater, Peter. "One Flame." _Resonance,_ New Earth Records, 2016.

Chapter 6: in a killer, Jules uses this music again to help Reese find the truth. It brings all of us to the Cascades, canoeing in a mountain stream at night:

May, Daniel. "Calm The Mind." _Solitudes Calm the Mind, _Somerset Entertainment Ltd., 2006

Chapter 17: in Predator. Prey nearby. You can feel the desperation in this music from the soundtrack of _Luther, _how it creates that tension in the fight scene. I see so many parallels between the characters of Reese and Luther. Wait until you get to the line across the page to queue this short piece. By the brilliant:

Englishby, Paul. "Carnage." _Luther (Songs and Score from Series 1,2,3),_ Silva, 2013.

Chapter 18: in expecting him, we travel with Reese into his past, finding the threads of who he was then. This first piece is the musical backdrop for his memory of this time. Wait until you see the line across the page to queue the second familiar piece. It is theme music for his encounters in the deep woods. And then, in eyes of the doe, we begin to see a little more about a mysterious being who has appeared to him through time. This piece takes us to the Cascades, where Reese discovers something he'd given up ever having. And if you'd like to read the same book that young Katie reads to Reese, here it is. He has much more to learn but he is taking his first steps on the path:

May, Daniel. "Stream of Consciousness." _Solitudes Calm the Mind, _Somerset Entertainment Ltd., 2006

May, Daniel. "Calm The Mind." _Solitudes Calm the Mind, _Somerset Entertainment Ltd., 2006

May, Daniel. "The Cascades." _Solitudes Calm the Mind, _Somerset Entertainment Ltd., 2006

Egawa, Keith. _Tani's Search for the Heart_, CreateSpace, March, 2013

Chapter 22: in the choices he'd made, Root recalls the tumultuous relationship with Sameen. Wait for the line across the page to queue this great piece from Alternative singer, Cat Power. Love that amazing guitar sound, too:

Power, Cat. "Dark End of the Street." _Dark End of the Street - EP, _Matador, 2008

Chapter 28: in all in white, Root has a disturbing vision. This piece was the background music to writing the second half of this chapter. If you can listen to this rendition - from the album instead of her solos on YouTube, you will hear the background voices, the percussion, and the waver-y sounds that give it its impact. I can't stop listening to this one. Wait until you see the line across the page to queue this devastatingly haunting piece by singer/songwriter:

Joan as Police Woman. "Forever and a Year." _The Deep Field, _Liberator Music, 2011_._


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: on his way**

* * *

**Upstate New York, December, 2016**

**Please note****: In ****the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1 there are suggested music pieces to accompany this and other Chapters to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them...**

At first she couldn't quite believe this was Reese. The man who, just a few months back, had been sitting in the same kitchen chair, practically mute, hyper-vigilant, with a gun under his jacket – here smiling, talking non-stop. Like a cork had been let out of a bottle, and fizz had gushed from the top. Jules smiled to herself and looked at his eyes.

Tired, of course, but there was something there that she hadn't seen before, in this short time she'd known him. Life. Life had come on in his eyes – that pop of light that was missing before, when Harold had first sent him to her door.

Harold was worried. She'd heard it in his voice on the phone, even thousands of miles away from New York, when she was working again in Sudan. He'd called just at the end of her mission, told her of this colleague of his who was struggling. Of course she'd said, of course she would help. With all the history she'd had with Harold, there could be no other answer.

And when he'd come there, to her kitchen, she could see all the signs of someone in trouble. Reese was the kind of man who wouldn't allow failure, who was constantly the bottom line, the one everyone depended on to get the job done. Jules hadn't known his history at first, and even now not much of it, but she could tell that he was crashing and burning. She remembered how he'd answered when she asked him if he knew why he was there:

_"Harold said this is some kind of gift. He wanted to do something for me."_

_"He told me you saved his life again–stepped in front of a bullet, he said, to save his life." Reese just stared at the fire._

_"I owe him a debt I can't repay." He looked her directly in the eyes as he said it, and she could see something fierce well up behind his _eyes.

That was the beginning, on her L-shaped couch in the living room, by the fire. Funny how we can be so fragile and so tough. Jules had seen it again and again. Police, firemen, colleagues in medicine, and especially, soldiers – they keep pushing and pushing, until they come to a point where they hit a wall. But they keep going, pushing, dragging themselves forward, until they can't. Jules wasn't immune, either. She'd done the same things, too. But, in spite of the rocky beginning, Reese was something of a home run. Something unexpected had happened, something that had changed everything.

So when she was giving him a hug, sending him off back home to Manhattan, she shook her head no when he offered her the book.

"This is yours," he said. In his hand was the thin white book, with the line drawing of a feudal samurai on the cover. She'd smiled up at him and shook her head.

"It's yours now. You'll be needing it for a little while longer," she said, pressing his fingers around it with her own.

"Besides, I'm going out of town for a few months." He didn't seem surprised, but maybe a little disappointed.

"My group in France called and they have something interesting going on." Reese said nothing, but waited for her to go on.

"They want me to set up a crisis center for people coming out of Africa. Sudan, South Sudan mostly, and others from West Africa, and maybe some from the Middle East, Syria. I don't have much experience with Syrians, but I can help with the others." Still nothing. He seemed like he wanted to, but he said nothing. That furrow was forming on the skin between his eyes.

"Six months. It'll go fast. I'll be training the people who'll take over when I leave. So my usual team won't be there this time." She could see it in his eyes. Imagining what it would be like. He still said nothing.

"I'm leaving by the end of the month," she said. "Rome."

He seemed a little lost. But then he did what he always did. He squared his shoulders, and got himself ready. Whatever came his way, he would handle it. He was the bottom line. Everyone depended on him.

He slid the white book into the deep pocket of his coat, and gave her a kiss on the top of the head. Then he backed his way through her front door, and left.

For hours after he'd left she could feel a fluttering in the air in front of her chest. In that space, roughly in the shape of an upright cylinder that she kept for him there. She felt it like bird wings fluttering.

It wasn't sitting well with him, that she was leaving. Or maybe it was something about the place. She didn't know for sure. But she could feel the disturbance, the fluttering. There was still time. Still time to work on that, before she left.

In the weeks ahead, she had gone each day to her school down the hill from the house. She went twice a day, at dawn and at dusk. She sat on the mat on the floor, with the candle lit – in the center of the low table in front of her; and the incense cone, trailing a thin gray line of smoke from the glowing tip; and the single fresh flower in the tiny vase.

She would empty herself of her thoughts, sit there breathing, until she was deep in Flow. Unaware of time or space. Floating. Until she opened her eyes and found herself there as though nothing had happened. And then, in that quiet, centered state, she would slide the cover from the Wooden Man, and close her eyes. Her arms and hands would slide and strike against the polished wood, the arms and leg clacking with the strikes, and the heavy trunk lifting and thumping down on its frame.

Then she would practice her form, pressing forward, always forward, as if against a force thrown toward her. And when she was ready, she would cover the Wooden Man, snuff the candle, rub the glow from the cone, and walk barefoot to the door. She would turn, and bow to the center, then back out through the door of the school.

* * *

These weeks had been a deeply peaceful time for her. Healing. Replenishing. And as the time grew closer for her trip, she chose a day when she moved from room to room in her house, sensing the energy and quiescing each one. Until the house had found its still point and she felt she could leave it in peace.

On one of her last nights, she had fallen asleep on the L-shaped couch in the living room, with one of the wool blankets from the coffee table trunk pulled over her, and the fire snapping in the fireplace. She was waiting for him. The fluttering had started again, in the air in front of her chest. She knew he was on his way. The sense of it had been growing each day until today.

He'd made his decision, and was on his way. She would rest on the couch until he was there.

Around midnight, she heard tires on the gravel and a car door thump. She opened her eyes, and sat up. The fire was low in the fireplace, blue flame devouring the last of the log. She spent a minute stacking more wood, and gray smoke curled up to the flue. Yellow flames leaped from the logs.

She walked around to the front door, and when she opened it, he was waiting at the top of the lawn, leaning against the side of his car. When he saw her he smiled and shook his head. How did she know? How did she always know when he was on his way?


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: The dark and the cold**

* * *

****Please note****: In the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1 there are suggested music pieces to accompany this and other Chapters to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them...****

**Upstate, New York, December, 2016**

Jules watched as Reese walked down the lawn from the road. At the front door she wrapped her arms around him in a hug, and he bent forward to give her a kiss on the top of the head. She slid her arm around him and they walked together down the hallway.

"Want some coffee?"

He nodded, and Jules let him go, heading for the kitchen. She could hear him sliding off his heavy coat, and the sound of it on one of the hooks in the hallway.

"It's always so much colder up here," he said.

"Umm. Remind you of something?" Jules was running the water in the sink, to freshen the water coming out of the pipes, and then filling the glass carafe with cold water. She poured it into the top of the coffeemaker, and then measured out the beans into the grinder. For a few moments she couldn't hear if he'd responded, while the grinder turned the beans to grounds. The smell of it, released by the grinding, made her breathe deeper. That was a smell that was so deeply embedded in her brain, like a kind of aroma therapy. It always made her soul-happy when she smelled fresh coffee brewing.

Reese had gone into the small powder room off the hallway, and splashed water on his face after the long ride up from the City. He didn't mind the drive – it gave him time to change gears himself, mostly highway driving until the last half-hour or so, when he was winding through back country roads in the dark. The dark and the cold.

Did it remind him of something? At first, he'd thought of Colorado – the mountains where he'd grown up, left alone with his grandfather while his father was deployed. It was his duty, his father had said, to take care of his grandfather, who was ailing with some kind of breathing problem. He didn't get around much, and at night he had the oxygen on in his room. So, when he was young, Reese had spent most of his time outdoors – in the woods and the streams, hiking all over the mountainside. He'd learned to hunt and fish, but he didn't care for trapping. Something about catching them that way. It bothered him, and he never wanted to do it.

But, in the Rangers, and later on in the CIA, he'd spent lots of time in the dark and the cold. Patrols in the mountains of Afghanistan. It was the extremes in the desert. As hot as it could get in the daytime, it could get so cold there at night. Clear skies with all the stars shining like bits of diamond overhead. And cold that would eat right through – teeth-chattering cold. There was not enough coffee, and not enough layers of clothing to help.

When the coffee was done, Jules found Reese in front of the fire, sitting with the poker in his left hand, staring at the flames. She sat his cup down on the stone seat at the front of the fireplace, and took hers back to the couch behind him. He was silhouetted there by the light from the fire.

It wasn't necessary to talk. She just let things take their course. Jules wasn't much for talking, anyway. But she could sense that there was a lot going on over there. Sometimes a phrase or a word would come to mind, and saying it out loud was just what was needed. She took no credit for that. It wasn't a gift, or anything like that. It just happened.

She curled up on the couch with her feet underneath her, sipping coffee. Reese was quiet, drinking, staring into the flames. And little by little, the energy was changing, coming down from high up inside him, near his shoulders, to lower down in his chest. But definitely not from the ideal – an inch below and an inch deep to his navel, at _dan tien_. He was scattered, all-over-the-place with his energy, and that made him like this, the way he was tonight.

He poked at the fire, and then, satisfied, laid the poker down, and stood up, turning to face her on the couch. She raised her hands, gesturing to come over, and for a moment she could see something – in his eyes and the way he held himself that made her want to weep for him. It tore at her heart.

But she stayed where she was on the couch. It was up to him. He had to choose. Maybe it was too soon. You can't push the river. She waited. And his eyes were aimed at the floor. She could feel the turmoil. She found herself saying her favorite mantra: _the highest good for all concerned_, slowly, over and over, as she emptied herself of any urgency or stake in the outcome. His choice.

Reese stepped forward toward her, and laid himself down on the couch, with his head on her lap. She swung around facing him, with her hands under his head, cradling it on her crossed legs. She held his head there for a moment, and she could see him closing his eyes, taking deeper breaths, giving himself over to her bit by bit. She needed to get him comfortable before they started. He would get too cold if she didn't.

So, she slid herself out from under his head, and reached over him to the back of the couch, lifting and rolling an afghan to push under his knees. That would flatten his back down on the couch and relax his muscles.

Then she twisted around to the trunk at her side, and lifted the lid. The smell of cinnamon wafted out, and she rummaged inside for one of her thick flannel sheets. Jules unfolded it most of the way, keeping it doubled over for warmth. The thickness of the flannel felt luxurious in her hands, weighty and soft on the skin. And just for good measure, she pulled one of her summer-weight quilts to throw over the top.

Reese had already done this with her – a few times, so she didn't need to explain anything. She just flipped off the lights, and poked the logs in the fireplace one more time, then slid back under his head like before.

Music. She needed some music to play in the background. She told him what she was doing and hopped up once again, crossing to the CD player nearby. She pulled out the one she wanted from its sleeve, and started it, then went back to sit, with Reese's head in her hands.

Piano, oboe, and breathy woodwinds lifted, swirling around them in the darkness, the phrasing insistent, like asking something softly, over and over. Five minutes, six minutes. Soon it was over, and the next one started right after.

Each took them more deeply into black velvet space, suspended there with the swirl of sound, snake-like, entwining them.

Her hands were on him, gently, turning him, with her fingers lightly sensing and adjusting, coaxing the tissues to release, allowing more freedom to move. Heat from her hands warmed his skin.

He was asleep already, breathing softly, twitching every once in a while – as the sound penetrated through, like warmth.

By two in the morning she had him just where she wanted. Balanced, his energy retrieved and restored to _dan tien_. When he woke, she thought, he would be a different man.

As she ended her session, she leaned forward over his head, whispering a silent prayer, for his peace of mind.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: too deep; what was he going to do? (rated T)**

* * *

****Please note****: In the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1 there are suggested music pieces to accompany this and other Chapters to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them...****

**Upstate New York, late December, 2016**

Jules sat with her hands around the back of his head, letting the weight of it sit in her palms. Inside her, she imagined light traveling down her arms and off her hands like heat, jumping the space between her hands and his head. The heat went through his hair and down the skin of his neck and back.

Tuning in more deeply, she could feel the subtle motion at his neck from the stretch of muscle from his breathing – a soft to-and-fro there in the tips of her fingers.

For a long while she just sat there silently, matching his breathing with hers. There was symmetry in that, and a deeper connection as they breathed together. And in a little while, she began sending pulses of a particular energy through her hands down into him. It was a searching energy. Jules was looking for something inside him, trying to hook onto it and pull it forward into conscious thought.

But Reese was too deep inside his own memory to pull him out of it.

**Mountains west of Herat, Afghanistan, November, 2001 (rated T)**

No moonlight that night, and it was tough going, on the trail up a steep slope, rocks sliding out from under their footsteps. Up ahead was another group of Rangers chasing after Taliban from Herat. Enemy soldiers were heading for the border with Iraq, and the Rangers were trying to cut them off before they escaped.

Off in the distance Reese and his men could hear small arms fire, and lots of it. Denny was on the radio, listening in, and even in the dark, Reese could see his face was worried. Their own group was small, traveling light, and had to be on the far side of the mountain ahead by morning. Theirs was a different mission.

Denny turned around to tell them something, and then all Hell broke loose from above them. Reese saw Denny flinch as a barrage of gunfire and mortar shells rained down on their position. The men leaped from the trail off the sides, taking cover wherever they could find it. They could hear the whistle-screech of mortar shells in the air, just before they landed; then loud explosions just ahead, and sounds of shattered rock bits bouncing off more rock in front of them. Seconds apart, mortars landed just short, one after another, and rounds from rifles whizzed and snapped in the air, bouncing off hard rock all around them. This couldn't be the small group of Taliban up from Herat. There were too many firing. Reese and his men fired rifle bursts up the trail, shooting at the spots where the mortars had come from.

Denny was calling for air support, and in a little while, they could hear artillery fire from behind them, up over the top of them, to the hill where the mortar-fire had come from. A little shelling before the main course was served up to the Taliban. For a little bit then, the hot-metal rain slowed down from the ridge, and Reese thought about moving his men to a better position. But as soon as they tried, more gunfire, and another mortar came in from another angle. They turned their fire to the new targets, while the heavy artillery behind them concentrated fire up the ridge.

They could hear the fight going on above them. The Rangers were taking fire from enemy higher up in the mountains. And their guys were firing everything they had at the enemy in return. The sound of it coming down the mountain was intense. Reese and his men needed to get up there to help.

Reese thought there might be a trail up there, just wide enough for a few motorcycles to ride in from the other side. Russian motorcycles were the Taliban's favorite way to travel – all over trails in the hills, mobile bands of mortar-armed soldiers firing off a few rounds, then moving on before they could be targeted and taken out.

In the darkness, he could hear the whistle-and-screech of another round coming in, closer this time. They all ducked lower, and covered their heads. The ground shook with the explosion. Pebbles pelted them and Reese could hear some of the others cursing, as they fired burst after burst up the ridge.

Overhead now, they could hear engine noise from airmen flying Close Air Support to hit the Taliban positions. A meat-grinder was just about to land in the middle of the bad guys, and it couldn't happen fast enough for Reese and his men. They were itching to move, to get back on the trail again, up to help their guys on the ridge. They heard and could see rockets exploding in the dark, orange balls of flame and smoke roiling up from the ridge above them. Reese heard Denny muttering out loud to the Taliban.

"Have a nice day." And some of the others chimed in, too, as the CAS circled again and again, pounding them over and over.

It didn't last long, but the Taliban took a beating in that short time. And when CAS flew off, it got really quiet really quick. No gunfire. No more mortars screaming in from the ridge. Just the sound of the wind in the rocks.

Reese and his men moved out, careful to stay low until they got to a spot that was better protected. They hustled ahead then, faster, making good time climbing up to the ridge. As they got closer, they could smell the smell of the rocket blasts that had flattened enemy positions.

The moon was just rising behind them, and weak light lit the trail as they got in closer. Denny had been calling ahead, but their guys weren't responding. Maybe COM was out, Reese thought. Or maybe something worse.

The first two they found were Taliban, thrown from their cycles in the strike. Reese walked up to one. He could smell that smell. Once you'd seen it, and smelled it, you'd never forget it. Twisted metal from his cycle had lacerated the soldier's midsection, and the contents had spilled out on the ground. Moonlight glistened off the coils, and they could smell blood and entrails in the night air. Reese stared at the still form, ashen skin where it wasn't bloody.

They moved on to the second one. Legs gone below the thighs, and torso twisted. Black burns on the paler skin. His men were checking the bodies, and on the ground, a small book, with the bloody picture of a woman, covered in black, holding two small children. There was a look in their eyes, Reese thought, a hollow look; not like the smiles and laughter of kids mooning for the picture. More like the look of kids who'd seen too much in their short lives – of war, of poverty, and death. Reese stood for a moment, looking down at the picture. Those faces. Those eyes. It was hard to see, and hard to look away.

Reese's men had started off again, and Denny turned back toward him.

"You comin' ?"

He looked up at Denny and nodded. That picture. Those eyes. Burned into the back of his. Like another from his time there in Afghanistan.

His mind jumped to summer of 2002, and the new kid they called Sketch. Funny-looking kid, with red hair, freckles and big buck teeth. Looked like a pimply teenager to Reese, but then he'd pulled out a picture of his wife and two kids. Proud, just like a Dad. Same red hair and freckles. Jeez, they looked just like him, poor kids.

Sketch got his name from the sketchbook he carried. He was always drawing things in the book, especially kids' faces. He had a way with their eyes. Looked just like them. He was good at it, and Reese was surprised that he could handle a rifle, too. Every time he looked at him, he forgot that he was a Dad. He kept thinking Sketch was a kid himself.

And one day, when they were driving on a long stretch of road, his men in a caravan of Hummers, they had come upon a little village. Just a few houses at the side of the road really. And there was one on the left, with some kids in the front – gawking at their caravan passing by. Reese could see one of the kids waving to some of the men as they drove by, and he remembered their eyes meeting for a moment as he came up even with the boy. They exchanged little smiles in that moment, his dark eyes flashing with his smile.

And then they both flinched as the shock wave hit them, then the sound of the explosion up ahead. They turned together, and saw a Hummer lifting in the air up ahead, the first one in the caravan. Flames and smoke hid the thing as it came back down to the road. The front part of the caravan was engulfed in smoke. Reese's men started running for the front, hidden in the smoke and debris.

When Reese got up there, the men were pulling wounded from the Hummers following that first one, and he could hear screaming from the wounded all around him.

"My legs ! My legs !" Reese walked past, to the first Hummer. Ripped apart, windows blown out. He looked in the passenger side. In the floor, a huge hole was ripped through the metal. In the seat there, on that side, was a soldier, and Reese could see his red hair sticking out from the front of his helmet.

_This is gonna be bad_, Reese thought to himself. The kid must have lost his legs in the blast.

"Medic!" he heard himself yell. And he leaned in with his arm to reach around the kid's chest and under his armpit to lift him. The door wouldn't budge, and he'd have to pull him out through the window. The kid was light, but not that light. Reese lifted him and then fell backwards to the ground with the kid's head and chest in his arms. And nothing else.

The Medic stopped for a second and looked down at Reese, then at Sketch, then back at Reese. He shook his head and then moved off. Nothing to do here.

It took a minute for Reese to get it. He'd started to yell for the Medic to come back. There was a wounded man here. And then something snapped in his head. He rolled over, and laid Sketch's torso on the ground. He jumped up, and looked back to the houses along the road. The signal must have come from one of those. The signal to blow the IED that took out the Hummer with Sketch inside.

Reese looked back the way they had come, and there was a knot of his men on the dirt in front of the house where the children had been. He ran down there, and when his men saw him coming, they parted. A man was kneeling on the ground, with his hands tied behind him. One of his men was holding a cellphone in the air toward Reese.

"He used this," the soldier said, as Reese walked up. They used cellphones to detonate IEDs placed on the roadways where the Americans would be. Reese looked at the man, kneeling, with hate in his eyes, and a smirk on his lips.

The smell rose up from Sketch's blood and guts soaked into Reese's camo. That same smell. His arms and hands were sticky with Sketch's blood. Back in the Hummer, the singed sketchbook with the drawings of so many kids' faces. And in his chest pocket, the picture of his wife and the two little kids back home. Reese could feel something start to break free inside him.

On the ground, kneeling, the man lifted himself, raising his head, shouting something Reese didn't understand. He started to reach for his rifle, the thought of those kids in his head, and this man on the ground, smirking, shouting in his face.

Reese shouldered his rifle, and his men backed away. No one said anything to stop him. The man on the ground stared up at him, defiant.

Then a little voice nearby. Reese turned his head. The little boy with the dark eyes, waving and smiling as they'd passed by – held now by one of his men squatting behind him, arm wrapped around the boy's tiny frame.

His face was streaked with tears, and he was reaching toward the man on the ground, calling him. Then he looked up to Reese, terror in his eyes, and that question, that terrible question, too.

What was he going to do?


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: flight; not over**

* * *

****Please note****: In the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1 there are suggested music pieces to accompany this and other Chapters to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them...****

**Upstate New York, late December, 2016**

In her hands and her belly, Jules could sense his disturbance – flashes of flame, and deep black cold, like death, revolving slowly inside him. Drawing him downward into the crush of a giant black spiral. Down and down into darkness – away from the light far above.

She could feel him giving in.

Jules lifted him from her crossed legs, then back down to the leather couch. Silently in the darkness, she crossed the floor to the lights of her player. Another CD. It had to be that one for this. Its music would take them where she needed to go.

On her way back to Reese, she poked at the dying embers in the fireplace. The living room had turned so cold. She added a few more logs above the glowing coals, then slid herself in again, beneath his head and shoulders.

She could sense the tension there with her hands. A nightmare, a memory of some long-ago scene – something had captured him at the very end of her session. And now he was trapped in it. She was going to go get him.

Jules aimed the remote at the player and pressed the button to begin.

Solo piano lifted up in the darkness, against a breathy held note, weaving slowly at first, waiting while she readied herself – for this. She could feel his tension growing stronger, more urgent.

No time to lose now.

Swiftly, yet softly, she flooded light down through her arms, through her hands, jumping the space between them and his head, then flooding his skin with it. She could sense it winding around him with each breath. Each one drawing in the light – down, down – chasing down inside him.

And in the darkness around them, that sound of piano riding on a carpet of sound, surrounding them, reaching out, riding the light down inside, too, reaching after him just as she did. So far ahead, though; already down so far. She could feel cold rising up all around him, so cold on the surface of his skin.

And the blackness, too; crushing, silent blackness drawing him in – slowly swirling, ready to swallow him. She could sense all this inside him. And him, like a bird with a broken wing, falling in, unable to fly out of it.

Swinging wide, she could just see him ahead, fluttering, head down into the spiraling blackness.

Falling, falling away from the light, into it.

Like a falcon diving for prey, she flew down after. Wings folded in, chasing faster. Down through the center of the spiral, where it was darker and colder.

He tumbled faster, free-falling beneath her. But she drew her wings in closer, and dropped even faster. Wind in her face til she was gaining on him fast, braking hard then. Slowing herself with her wings, back arched, claws forward, swooping in. Clutching him, drawing him in close to her chest, swinging low with him, starting to rise, his back to her breast.

Lifting, flying, wings pumping – in blackness-turning-to-velvet sky. Soaring together, with up-turned eyes.

Reese was twitching under her hands, his head tipping back like he was looking to the sky. She could feel him in her hands, body stiffening as he was soaring. A soft moan from his throat.

So sudden.

Only a moment ago, he was standing with his rifle aimed at the man on the ground, finger sliding along the ridge of the trigger, his men backing away. Smoke and flames behind him, and the squeal in his ears from the bomb going off – strange that he could still hear that sound, the little cry from that little boy reaching out to the man on the ground.

Then turning to face him, those small dark eyes on him. Those eyes.

Reese felt himself lifting then, rising up, looking down at the scene as though floating above it. He closed his eyes. What had he done?

Turning away – upward out of the smoke and flames, toward a yellow glow barely seen in the gray. Lifting, held close, something warm and solid at his back, and air moving swiftly over him as he picked up speed. And such a stillness around him – the wind, and a deep, deep hum in the air, everywhere – even inside him. It was shaking him. A quiet roar filling him with sound, louder as he moved toward that yellow glow.

All he knew now was this deep vibration – and that he was a part of it – a sound more peaceful than he had ever been.

He turned his face into the sound, allowing it. It washed over and through him, wherever it wanted to go. Its sound like an echo inside, filling him, humming him down to his bones, filling his eyes with its soft yellow light.

The light and the sound. The light – was – the sound.

Gliding, held close by something strong – like claws; against something warm – like feathers.

Aiming for that deep yellow sound, far away. But closer each moment. Closer, with each wing-flap he felt.

**Upstate New York, late December, 2016**

Jules could feel him rising like a swimmer coming up for air, and then Reese sat straight upright, eyes open, breathing hard. He looked at the fire at his side, and realized where he was. Then he swung his legs around, and leaned back – relieved, she thought, against the tall back of the couch, resting there.

In a minute, Reese turned his head to face her. She could see how he had composed himself in that minute. How he was back already as his usual self. This persona was never very far, and he donned it like a uniform to present to the world. But she knew better.

She didn't look him in the eyes just now. He needed time.

She let him lead the way. She had no need to discuss things. Her work with him was done on a non-verbal level. Talking was unnecessary. A complication.

These things were difficult to explain, so she usually didn't offer. And Reese was not the type to want to talk, either. Things would work out.

His eyes were on the fire now. Watching the flames on the logs she had added. Dry bark made gray smoke above them. Some of it had caught fire, flaming up with heat from the orange embers below. They could hear crackling and snapping as fire licked along each log.

She watched him settle in. There was something grounding, settling, about watching a fire. As calming and grounding as walking barefoot in the grass, or through deep forest lit with sunbeams. Our deep brains find comfort there, familiarity and comfort so deep that we feel safe, contented, at peace.

Jules watched his eyes. He didn't let on what he was thinking. Perhaps it was nothing at all. Perhaps he was empty of thought, now, sloughing everything that had trapped him before.

It made Jules think of lines from _The Book of Five Rings._ In the Book of Earth, Mushashi said of the Warrior's Way: "S_pirit is the thing that must be concentrated upon...The proper attitude of spirit must be constantly studied...When a man fights in real combat his spirit becomes fierce...You can only fight the way you practice...Through practice you will be able to properly maintain yourself at all times." _She thought about this. And about Reese's descent into darkness. She had a sense that Reese had lost this thought.

As a warrior, Reese had trained for so long that he still retained his muscle memory. He could still handle his weapons, still scheme and plan, still defeat the enemy; but he had lost his edge. To be a Warrior, one must train every day, must practice his art, ceaselessly, so that the "_spirit of the thing itself" _judged one's commitment worthy - worthy of sharing its knowledge. If one abandoned his practice, then _spirit_ would abandon the Warrior. And a warrior without _spirit_ was no Warrior.

Another track had started on her player. One that Jules recognized as a perfect transition from the other. Slow piano notes, high up on the keyboard, plinked a hopeful theme on a deep layer of sound. It vibrated inside them, high in their chests.

It made her aware of her arms and hands. Still vibrating from the session with Reese. On her skin, she could feel the warmth, and the little electric sensations from the work. It would pass in time.

But the memory of flying, of the sense of cold on her skin, flying down after him as he was slipping away. It came back to her, sitting there. She closed her eyes and let it go. In her mind's eye, seeing him falling down the center of that spiraling blackness, into the darkness and the cold – she knew he was in trouble.

She could feel the sense of herself as a falcon, claws and feathers and fierce eyes – the fastest bird - tipping head down, drawing her wings in close to her body, shooting after him in the darkness, falling like a stone. In her mind's eye, she had seen him ahead, fluttering, tumbling, slipping away into deeper darkness below.

A metaphor, she thought. This was a metaphor for a warrior who has lost his way. And the fight to bring him back. This was real combat, and her spirit must be fierce to fight for this. Like a falcon, armed with speed, claws and ruthless eyes. It could be nothing less. To rescue a Warrior from the abyss of himself. Nothing less. Real combat.

And it was not over.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: night sky; familiar somehow; a killer**

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****Please note****: In the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1 there are suggested music pieces to accompany this and other Chapters to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them...****

**Upstate New York, late December, 2016**

Fire danced in the fireplace, its light welcome in the darkness of the room. Its heat wrapped him with its warm embrace. Reese felt empty now – silent and empty inside – just the sound of fire snapping in the fireplace and air rushing over burning wood, its soft roar heading up the chimney stack. He pictured the smoke rising up above the roof to clear air; and sky above them, bright with stars blinking in the night.

Night sky. Like so many nights when he was young.

**Colorado, July, 1990**

Cool breeze on his skin made him shiver, and finally he woke. For a long time now, the breeze had teased him in his sleep, sliding over his skin, coaxing him from his dream. The sun was down low already, and in this spot under the canopy of trees, darkness had slipped in while he was sleeping. The rock below him was still warm from the afternoon sun, but the breeze was cool, almost cold now, and goosebumps lifted on his skin. Time to head home.

The only way off his rock in the middle of the stream was to drop back down in the water and swim to the other side. He slid forward to the edge and dipped his legs in. Cold. It was cold on his skin – clear mountain stream coursing down from the rocky ledge up above. He pushed himself forward off the rock and down into flowing water, head bobbing on the surface, neck-deep in the pool. He could imagine the gray-green minnows below, scattering as he disturbed the rhythm of the stream. In a minute they'd forget all about it and return to the rock, facing upstream, their gray-green bodies waving in the gentle current.

Reese wished that he could stay. He would lay on his rock all night staring up at the stars in the patch of sky above the stream. And night sounds would rise all around him, tiny scurries on the ground and bird calls in the trees, water splashing and gurgling in the rocks above the pool.

He'd reached the far side of it now, swimming to the shallows near the bank. He grabbed a handful of grass to pull him up, and felt cold air on his wet skin. At twelve, he was slim and tall for his age. Not an ounce of fat on his frame. Nothing to keep the cold at bay. Instantly, he was shivering.

Arm over arm, he grabbed for grasses on the bank, lifting himself until his feet were firmly on the path. Now every inch of wet skin was exposed, and he shivered uncontrollably. He'd walked in today in hot sunshine, sweating from the hike. No shirt, just the shorts he was wearing, and sneakers.

He leaned down to straighten his sneakers on the path, then he rubbed the bottom of his feet on the moss and slid each foot into one. He knelt down to tie the laces quickly, so he could be on his way. His teeth chattered and he wrapped his arms close around his body as he walked. The wet shorts clung to the skin of his thighs, wicking any body heat away, and Reese tucked his arms even closer to his body. He slid his hands up and down his arms, warming himself as best he could.

This was the path that woodland deer used to reach the water. His steps walked the same path that they walked, day after day, night after night, to drink from the pool. At the top of the path was the edge of the woods, deep forest stretching far off to the road. He shivered again just thinking of it.

The air in the forest would feel colder still. He remembered nights when there was a mist hanging in the woods, air that smelled of leaves and rich deep earth. A refuge in the heat some summer nights. He would breathe deeply then, inhaling the cool sweet air in his favorite woods near his favorite pool in his favorite place on earth.

Tonight, though, all he wanted was to be at home, in front of a roaring fire, eating hot soup. At the top of the path he stopped, looking into the woods. He was shaking with cold now, and he couldn't bring himself to enter. His legs were shaking so hard that he let himself drop to the ground at the edge of the trees.

Reese felt the earth beneath him. It was warm, warm against his skin. He laid down on his side, scrunched in a ball on the warm earth. Nothing in his recent memory had felt this good. He warmed himself there, first on one side, then turning to warm the other, the soil wiping the water from his wet skin. As long as he stayed down on the earth, he felt warm and safe from the cold. He rested there, drying himself, slowly re-warming his body. He smelled the earth beneath him and trees behind him in the woods – pine, fir, and quaking aspen – and grasses on the bank leading down to the pool.

He shivered again. Every once in a while the forest behind him breathed a shallow breath down the hill – over the top of him. Reese closed his eyes. If he could just wait here a little longer, warm himself in the little heat left here from the day, then he could make it back. Back to his home, where he could warm himself by the fire. Another breath from the forest chilled him again. The cold mountain air was winning.

In a little while, there were soft footsteps on the earth, echoing quietly under the trees. She stepped softly, ears swiveling to listen for danger, and nose twitching toward an unfamiliar smell. She lifted her head to peer ahead, but saw nothing in the woods to alarm her. It was harder to run now, her belly swollen with twins. In just days, she would birth them, when the moon was full and high overhead. But tonight, she was headed to the pool where she would drink.

Just ahead, the trees ended and a narrow bit of land led down to the water's edge. She would have to take care on the soft slope, where the soil and the little stones rolled away beneath her. She was not so nimble now to leap from the path to firmer ground.

There was that strange smell again. She stopped and looked around her in every direction, ears twitching, her tail swiveling, white fur flashing underneath. The white-tailed doe stepped forward softly. Her footsteps made hardly a sound in the deep loam under the trees.

Her eyes searched ahead. The treeline ended just a few steps away. She liked to stand there at the edge of the trees looking out from above – before she started down the bank to the water's edge. She felt something different here tonight. It made her edgy and cautious. But the smell of the stream up ahead pulled her. She needed to drink; and she pressed ahead.

There on the ground she saw something. Pale, small, and alive. She stopped in her tracks. For a moment she was going to turn and run. But then she didn't. It hadn't moved. She watched it for a moment. She could see it shivering. Like a lost fawn on the ground in the woods. Her nose twitched, and her ears flicked. She took a step closer, ready to run if anything threatened.

But, it didn't move. She could tell it was alive, and yet it didn't move. She could see it shiver again. Her soft dark eyes looked down at it, curled in a ball at her feet. She reached out and touched it gently with her nose, then lifted her head, ready to turn and run. It didn't move.

She felt her own life inside her, lively, tumbling and stretching, her sides bulging and wiggling with their motion inside her. Perhaps this little one on the ground had wandered away, not much bigger than a young fawn itself. The doe leaned down and nudged it with her nose. It felt cold.

She remembered a fawn born too late in the season, and the cold coming in too early that year. Her first time giving birth. She remembered the smell of its wet skin, how she tried to dry it, and the tiny newborn shivering in the cold air. Until it didn't move any more. She looked down at the small, wet ball at her feet, and leaned down, bending her legs to lower herself next to it, her warm fur covering its back.

In a little while his shivering stopped. Like a blanket had rolled out over him. Warm and safe from the cold. Large, exquisite eyes watching him. Nose softly twitching with his smell. Familiar somehow.

**Upstate New York, late December, 2016**

Reese felt the glow of the fire on his eyelids. And he could see the motion of someone between him and the fire. He opened his eyes. It was Jules, poking the fire, adding more wood. He nodded his head. Now he understood. Everything tumbled into his mind, and he could make sense of it now.

Jules turned her head, like he had said something out loud. But he hadn't. She scanned him, sitting there, and turned back to her fire. With the iron poker, she was lifting the logs she had added, now that they'd tumbled down from their weight on the burned ones below. She made a space for the air to go, to feed the fire. Flames shot up, and the new wood steamed and popped and sizzled.

When she was done, Jules put the iron poker on the stone seat – a little ways down from the fire. Then she turned around and went back to her player, changing the disc that had stopped inside. She had another one in mind now. For this time of night, with the fire roaring and the dark air high overhead.

She walked back to the L-shaped couch where Reese was sitting. Like she had done once before, she sat down close to him, crowding his personal space. His eyes were on her, and for a long moment she said nothing, tuning in. And then the music started. Music she had played for him once before; solo piano, with the sounds of water, and a paddle swishing, a canoe gliding and birds calling in the deep woods. It was the same music she'd played the night Reese learned of his brother, his twin brother.

Reese started to shiver. His eyes focused on the fire over her right shoulder. He couldn't seem to bring himself to speak. So she started. Softly:

"You were a long way from home."

He nodded.

"In the mountains," she said.

He nodded. Shivering again. Her eyes were reading him.

"Wet and cold – alone in the mountains – "

"She found me. The doe. I never knew, before tonight."

"She watches out for you, John," Jules said, in her softest voice. "For you – and Matt."

His eyes filled and threatened to spill over down his face. He was trembling. The sound of paddling in a mountain stream, water gurgling in the darkness, and birds calling – he could smell the pines, feel the cold air of the mountains on his skin. Music. Memory. Entwined in his mind. He remembered the doe, her twin fawns at the edge of the pool, and him on his rock, watching.

Jules waited. She could sense that he was finding his path. Her mantra appeared in her brain: _the highest good for all concerned._ She nodded to herself and closed her eyes, so she wasn't tempted to interfere. There was a fluttering in the air in front of her chest. Yes. He was struggling. It felt like bird wings flapping in a cage. Jules repeated her mantra and breathed a deep slow breath. She was right there if he needed her.

Reese jumped in his mind to another time. Back to Basic, with his drill-sergeant growling in his face, and him in the mud commando-crawling under barbed wire, with his rifle and his face above the slop. Night trainings. Day-long runs with packs on their backs. And clipping onto the wire, wind flapping his gear through the open side, stepping out to nothingness, air rushing past, until the tug, and the sound of the chute coming out, and then the jerk as his chute caught air.

He remembered these thoughts, and having them here once before, with Jules. The steady drumbeat of his early success, day after sweaty day, month after grueling month. He could see it in his eyes, and the way that he carried himself.

What did she like to call him? A warrior. She called him a warrior.

And maybe, for a little while, it was true. The good days, when the mission was clear, and the enemy, too. But something had changed.

_His success had pushed him to work more and more where he knew less and less. He was becoming a deadly weapon wielded by any hand, pointed and fired at an enemy he didn't know, and often did not even see. They were no longer exclusively soldiers he killed. They were targets, chosen for him, purported to have lethal intent. They might be terrorists, but they might be scientists, hackers, engineers, politicians – those whose work could bring danger to our shores. His targets didn't know he was coming. He just appeared and killed them._

Jules could feel the fluttering, frantic now. She opened her eyes and Reese was trembling again, shaking his head, no.

"No?" she said out loud. His jaw clenched and his shoulders lifted high near his ears.

He had it. It was there in his mind, like poison. She could feel it.

"Say it," she said, softly then. He trembled, holding back.

"Say it." Tears filled his eyes and spilled over, lines jagged on his cheeks as he shook his head, no.

Slowly, in her softest voice:

"How can it be - any worse - than this?"

He leaned forward with his face in his hands, shoulders trembling. She reached over and wrapped her arm around him, waiting. His muscles clenched under her arm. Jules leaned down near his ear. In a whisper:

"Say it."

In his hoarse whisper-voice, "what if he knew? – what I am." She felt him clenched and trembling under her arm and she leaned her head down against him. Softly:

"And what is that?"

A long pause, and then this:

"A killer."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7: For a long time, he drifted (rated T); open his eyes, and see**

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****Brooklyn, 2015****

Instantly, Reese was thrown down to the street, and his body bounced hard on the pavement. Two sets of arms yanked him up and jammed him into a wall of the old crumbling building. Brick tore at him and his head bounced, again and again, on the brick until he was down again, flat on his back on the sidewalk.

Blindly, Reese thrashed out around him and connected with someone, just able to grab an arm. He yanked the arm over the top of him, whipping the body against the brick. The arm went limp and legs collapsed onto his chest. He was pinned underneath, struggling to get free, throwing the legs to one side. And then he could hear the other set of feet running off down the street.

Reese dragged himself fully upright, unsteady, leaning in against the wall. Blood streamed down his face from a cut through his brow, the split in his lip and wounds on the side of his head. The sleeve on his white shirt had ripped away, exposing more bloody scrapes underneath; his hands were cut and stinging from gravel and glass on the street. Something was wrong with his leg, but he couldn't focus on that now.

Reese heard scuffling nearby and he reached out with an arm to protect himself. Then there was a thud, like a body landing on cement. Then:

"It's me, Reese – I'm here." Shaw's voice was next to him, and he felt her wrap an arm around his waist, guiding him. She half-carried him a dozen steps and he could hear a car door open. Shaw lowered him down across the back seat and he felt her pull at his leather belt, sliding it out of the belt loops. She circled it around his right thigh, and then cinched it tightly. Reese grimaced from the pressure and reached down to the belt.

Shaw's hands and arms were covered with his blood. She quickly shoved his legs inside the car and slammed the door.

Reese was conscious, but barely so. He couldn't see, but he could hear the car engine accelerating. The ride was jolting and each heave over the broken pavement bounced his head against the seat. Finally, Reese slipped over the edge into welcome darkness.

For a long time, he drifted just like that.

When he was aware again, Reese could hear before he could see. There were voices speaking in hushed tones. He heard clicking noises, felt sharp pricking on his head. He could smell blood and taste it, too. Reese tried to sit up, but immediately the voices warned him to stay still. A bright light was shining through blue paper on his head.

Shaw was speaking to him while she cleaned and stapled the lacerations on the side of his scalp. The room was spinning and Reese tried to open his eyes to stop it, but his right eye wouldn't open. The left eye was blocked by a towel under his head. He'd just have to wait; so he slid back into darkness and another memory much further back.

**Colorado, 1988**

Two figures stood on a wide river bank, next to the water's edge. A boy lifted a string of fish to show the man and they both smiled at the catch. They set about cleaning the fish and slid them onto long straight, freshly-cut skewers, leaning them against rocks around the edges of a smokeless fire. They kept a close watch on the fish, turning them to cook evenly. The fish steamed and bubbled hotly as they pulled the skewers off the rocks. They blew on their fingers as they stripped the meat and ate the juicy bites. Reese saw the look in his father's face as they shared their catch together, remembering the rare joy of that moment.

He looked like his father except for the short soldier haircut and stocky body. Reese was lankier with finer features from his mother's side, and wore his hair long. He caught hell for it from his father, but not worse than a cuff on the head. Reese didn't see his father much–he was deployed somewhere overseas, and had left him with his grandfather who lived alone, too, and needed help around the place.

His father had told Reese it was his duty to look after the old man, who was sick with some kind of breathing problem and couldn't walk far without running out of breath. As Reese remembered it, he had spent much of his youth alone, out in the woods and streams, hunting and fishing. He'd had little use for people.

**Manhattan, 2015**

Shaw was calling his name. It took a while for him to realize what it was. He opened his eyes, but the right one wasn't working. He saw her sitting in front of him.

"John," she said again.

"Okay," he said back, and she shook her head no.

"You're a mess, John."

"I saw you putting me back together, Shaw," he said.

"If you'd just waited five more minutes for me, none of this would have happened," she said, annoyed.

"They were on the move. No time left. I got one–what happened to the other one?"

"John, don't you remember? You took on five of 'em. Two are in the morgue, one is in the ICU, and the other two are in custody. I went back for your sorry ass." She feigned contempt, then broke into a weak smile for him.

"Thanks for the back-up, Shaw."

He could see another face in the background. Harold was standing behind Shaw, peering at him through his glasses. He looked upset–a little angry, but more worried.

"John, Miss Shaw is right. You put yourself in unnecessary danger by taking on five armed men by yourself." Reese didn't say anything. And he didn't want to move right now.

"I thought we had agreed to work more as a team. Yet you seem even more intent to work alone – I'm very happy to see you alive, John, though Miss Shaw tells me you'll need weeks to recover from your injuries."

"I don't remember what happened, " Reese said.

"Because you have a concussion from hitting a brick wall a couple of times." Shaw began to click off each item on her fingers. "And before that, it looks like you had a little gun battle. You took out two, but they hit you twice. Your vest stopped the kill shot, but you nearly bled out from the one in your thigh. Just missed the femoral artery, " she said with a half-smile, cocking her head at him.

His hands were bandaged and he held them up to her. She nodded and complained "– took me an hour to pick out all the glass and gravel in your hands. And, you had dirt tattoos and road rash from your shoulder to your ankle. They must have dragged you, and your right knee is ripped up pretty good."

"Okay, Shaw, I get it." He lifted his head to argue the point, but regretted it immediately as the room started to spin violently. He wanted to retch from the intense spinning. Shaw jumped up. She drew up some fluid into a syringe and injected it into the IV line in his arm.

"You're gonna feel tired again, but the dizziness and nausea will be better. Get some sleep. We'll talk later." He tried to protest, to fight the urge to succumb to the medication, but he couldn't resist it.

**Upstate New York, late December, 2016**

Memories, old memories from his past were racing through his brain, one after another. He couldn't stop them. It was a catalog of the damage he'd done: a lifetime of fighting, maiming, killing. His brain was on fire with it. The memories. All the faces, and the bodies, and the eyes. Staring at him.

"John," she said. "Open your eyes."

He felt the skin of his eyelids creaking as he opened his eyes. Water was dripping everywhere, down his face, his neck, onto his chest and back. It was as though every bit of moisture in his body was boiling off, pooling in little rivers flowing over his skin.

"Here. Drink this," she said. And she gave him a shallow bowl with a green liquid in it, strong and bitter in his mouth. He shook his head and held it out to her.

"All of it. Drink all of it." He grimaced and held it in front of him, fighting the urge to refuse.

But he brought it to his lips and tipped the bowl, draining the rest of it. Jules took the bowl from him.

He was trembling a little, the liquid coursing through him like a cool river in the heat. She turned and placed the bowl on the stone seat in front of the fire, and then she added more wood, fire blazing, and heat turning their skin hot and red.

She adjusted the leather hide draped around him, the supple leather drenched now with his sweat. And then in her hand, she lifted a wooden stick wrapped tightly with layers of dark gray-green leaves, the leaves bound together over the stick with a fine green cord. Jules held the end near some orange embers in the fireplace, and the leaves quickly caught fire at the tip. She blew out the flames, and let the smoke rise from the end of the stick. It drifted upward, and she moved the stick to the space between the two of them. At her side was a long white feather, and she lifted it in her right hand, holding the smoking stick in her left. First, she waved the feather on the other side of the stick, towards herself, and the little tendrils of smoke from the leaves turned her way. Again and again she used the feather to send the smoke to her. Sage. Cleansing smoke.

Then, with small soft strokes, she waved the feather the other way, and the smoke from the leaves began to surround Reese. As he breathed, he could smell the sharp smell of the burning leaves and their smoke. It wasn't unpleasant. In fact, he was beginning to feel lighter inside, calmer. And the racing thoughts, the ugly memories, had quieted now.

Jules knelt at Reese's side next, and with the feather, aimed the streamers of smoke around him there, up and down for the whole height of him sitting there. And then, she moved again, kneeling behind him, smoking him with the sage stick all over his back. Then, she moved to the far side of him, bathing that side in gray smoke, too. When she returned to the front, she could see how he had changed.

His face was peaceful now, his eyes closed, and his brow un-furrowed. She could see his breathing, slow and deep, a comfortable rhythm in and out. She smoked the two of them again, with the stick held between them. And then, she placed the stick and the feather on the stone seat in front of the fireplace. She moved to Reese's right side, and sat down on the floor next to him. The fire bathed him in orange light.

Jules emptied herself, and breathed deeply, in and out, for three breaths. She recited a prayer in an ancient language, barely audible. And at the end, she breathed deeply for three breaths. Then she rose and moved to Reese's left side. Here was where all the trouble was.

She sat on the floor cross-legged at his left side. Three deep breaths, in and out, slowly. She could sense it, his energy on this side. Instead of a smooth, comfortable flow, his was prickly and agitated. Her lips moved in another prayer and Reese could barely hear the sound. Words he didn't recognize. Something about the sound. A low vibration. Nasal. He felt it inside.

The fire – heat – and light. The prayer – sound – vibration. It worked in him, rearranging and smoothing with his breath. And in a little while, it had ended. He could open his eyes, and see.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8: It's you; Don't question the mission (rated T); beginning to seep in.**

* * *

**Upstate New York, late December, 2016**

She was sitting next to him on the floor at his left side when his eyes opened. He didn't look at her, but fixed his eyes on the fire blazing in the fireplace. So hot on his skin that the sweat poured off him. The soft leather hide that she'd thrown over him was saturated with it.

It made Reese think of some kind of ritual or ceremony – and maybe that's what he needed. Nothing else had worked. He'd tried to ignore it for years – keep working as if this damage wasn't there, but it was dragging him down. It was like a heat inside. White-hot, like a poker sometimes.

Reese took in a breath, but the air was hot going in, and hotter going out. Something had to give or something bad was going to happen. He started to reach for the hide, to pull it off. But her hands were on his the second he started to move. He closed his eyes, couldn't look at her. And then Reese could feel something heavy, like a rolling, building pressure coming from her direction. It was strong, almost painful. He hadn't noticed it at first, but now he realized it had been there, slowly pumping up, the pressure building until he had to pay attention.

She still had his hands. He wanted to back away before something happened.

"Look at me," she said.

He didn't. There was something painful there, and looking her way could make him lose his grip. He was looking down instead, pursed-lip breathing to handle the pressure-pain. She leaned in closer.

"In _The Book of Five Rings_ Musashi describes what makes a Warrior. Do you remember?" Reese bent forward, grimacing, as the pressure ratcheted higher. He didn't answer. She leaned in, whispering.

"He tells us what makes a Warrior different – different than any other class of people. Do you remember?" More pressure rolled in on him. He still said nothing.

"Mortal combat, John. Death. Either you live or you die in the next moment. And it is only your devotion to the training and the strength of your spirit that makes the difference. Do you remember?" Reese could barely breathe. The pressure rolled up over him, pressing him down like a giant stone.

"– _a master achieves the Way by being devoted to the art," _she whispered. She was watching him bend under the weight.

"Do you understand what he is saying, John? Warriors are different than everyone else. You put it all on the line. You face death, John, every day – and it is only the training, your skill, and the heart you bring to it that lets you survive. Without those, you are defeated. That's the price you have to pay, John. Every day."

Reese was shaking his head, no.

"I'm not that person," he said in his whisper-voice.

"But you are," she said, lifting herself higher next to him. "Didn't you train for years to be the best? Didn't you fight, and bleed for your men? Didn't you lead them in battle? Mortal combat, John. No one else does that."

"They weren't soldiers at the end," he whispered. "just people, kids sometimes – I was sent and I killed them all."

"That's what Warriors do, John. You go where you are sent and do what you must do."

"Not like that," he said.

Reese knew what he had signed up to do in black ops, but it had started to change him inside. He'd grown uneasy in this role. Certainly, if the information he was given was true about his targets, they deserved to be stopped. He began to believe, though, that he was not the right one to do it.

Musashi would not agree. In the second book of _The Book of Five Rings_, called Water, Jules recalled his writing:

_why would you want to appear as one thing and be another? If you are a warrior then you are a warrior and if you are not a warrior then you are not a warrior. The Way...is the Way...Do not be false to yourself...For whatever reason you have chosen to be a warrior, you must understand your responsibility to the art and to yourself. They are one and the same._

And she remembered another passage in Water, one she'd recited many times, when Musashi wrote of the strategy of a Warrior. It started with how a Warrior carries himself:

_You are undoubtedly familiar with men who are quiet and strong and seem to be doing nothing. They do not appear to be tense and do not appear to be in disarray. They simply appear...When it is necessary to attack, they do so with complete resolve, sure of themselves, neither over-bearing in attitude, nor with false humility._

A balance must be found within oneself so that neither false bravado nor a lack of confidence tainted the internal sense of self. There must be a stiff resolve, a confidence that flowed directly from unceasing practice and immersion in the Way. The bearing of a Warrior was hard-won, evidence of mastery of oneself, and acceptance from what Musashi called _the spirit of the thing_.

This was what it took – to live the life that Reese had chosen. There was no middle ground. _If you are a warrior, then you are a warrior...the Way...is the Way_.

Jules leaned toward him. The pressure shifted, and his head was pounding.

"What are you afraid of, John?" he heard her say. He didn't answer. She decided to push him harder.

"Could it be your brother?" His hand came out in her direction.

"Stop," he whispered, but she kept coming.

"You're afraid he won't accept, won't understand. You just found him, and now you're afraid you could lose him."

"Stop."

Jules could see the anguish in his face. She knew this was it.

"You have a family now – that you didn't know you had. A brother, his wife and kids, the new baby they named after you – so much to lose," she whispered. He wouldn't speak.

"They aren't the ones you have to fear, John. It's you. _You_ can't accept you."

**Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, China, 2010 **

They were on their own until the chopper came back with the extraction team to get them out again at dark. Ahead was the steep, long staircase, running next to the office building, and they descended it quickly, Kara first, with Reese following.

At the bottom they could already sense that something was wrong. It was too quiet, and there was a faint smell, like blood and something dead nearby, in the air coming around the corner of the building; it wasn't until they rounded the corner that the full picture was clear.

In broad daylight, at tables where the young Chinese workers had been sitting, death was everywhere. A massacre of unarmed kids. Bodies were slumped over tables, or lying in their own blood on the cement, heaped together trying to escape; dozens of them.

Reese stopped in his tracks. Someone was there ahead of them on their mission. Someone had cut through the workers while they were eating on the pad outside, firing bursts with each finger-pull from automatic rifles. They hadn't had a chance.

Reese looked around at all the bodies, while Kara waded in, looking for anyone who might threaten them, too. Maybe the killers were still there, hidden. Maybe they were after the same laptop that Reese and Kara were sent to find.

Up ahead, they could hear a moaning sound. Someone on the ground was still alive. Kara went forward first and knelt down beside him, turning him over to face her. Reese heard her speaking in Mandarin to the wounded kid, jostling him to keep him conscious, pushing him hard to give her what she wanted.

Reese kept watch while she was at it. He listened to the sound of her voice, interrogating the kid. He was moaning in pain, crying out when she pushed her gun against his wound. Even in Mandarin, Reese could tell he was delirious. But she kept pushing him for more. She didn't care that he was wounded; she just wanted him to talk.

A gunshot startled him and he flinched – until he realized it was Kara firing. She stood up and started walking away from the man on the ground, and then she turned back to Reese.

"Let's go," she said. Reese frowned. "What did he say?"

"He wanted something for pain," she'd said.

Reese felt that familiar tightening inside. She was keeping things from him, again. She wouldn't have killed him without getting something from him, about what had happened here, who had done this. And mercy was not Kara's strong suit.

It made him uneasy sometimes, to work with someone who killed without question, who followed orders without thought, and expected him to do the same. Don't question the mission. Just get it done, she had always told him.

**Upstate New York, late December, 2016**

She could see it in his face. He didn't know what to do, what to think. She had the solution.

She reached forward and pulled the leather hide from his shoulders. Underneath it she could see his white shirt plastered to his skin, soaked in his sweat. He was about to get uncomfortable.

"Get up and follow me," she said. She stood and waited for him to do the same. He hesitated, but there was something in the sound of her voice that made him obey.

She moved to the French doors at the back of the room; outside, the first light of morning was just brightening the sky to the east. She slid the door open, and the two of them walked, barefoot, onto the deck in the back. She could hear his breath change as the cold air and cold footing hit him. It would take a few minutes. The roaring fire inside and the leather hide she'd wrapped over his body had overheated him; at first, this cold would feel welcome.

She led him off the deck and down onto the grass at the back. The blades were hard and stiff with cold, and they walked over them toward the left. She knew he would guess where she was taking him. They could see their breath in the cold still air, and mist was rising off their heated skin. Up ahead was the field with the tall brown grasses bending low. The footing was harder here, and they stepped gingerly over frozen dirt and fallen stalks, prickly and sharp on their feet.

The cold was beginning to seep in.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9: Familiar; the ring; moving meditation; two could play at that game; **_**the Way... is the Way...**_

* * *

**Upstate New York, late December, 2016**

She could hear him crunching over grass white with frost as they passed the pump-house and descended the hill. If they went all the way to the bottom, it would end at the lake, but half-way down was the one-story building that was her training school. The rising sun in the east cast its beams through a clearing in the trees onto the front doors. Jules reached for the pulls and swung them open.

Inside, they stopped at the opening and stood side-by-side. Reese watched her as Jules curled one hand into a fist against the palm of the other, with her fingers raised to the ceiling. She pushed both hands forward away from her body and bowed over them into the center of the room.

Jules motioned for Reese to do the same. Then they walked together, barefoot, over the bamboo floor, with just the light from the rising sun lighting the inside. Jules brought him to the low table where she lit a candle and with its flame she lit the tip of an incense cone from the brass dish in the center of the table. A thin wisp of smoke trailed up from the glowing end and Reese could smell the fragrance of the incense. Familiar.

**California, September 10, 2001**

It was Jessica's apartment. She'd had everything ready for him when he'd gone there, on leave. He remembered the pretty dress she'd worn when she came to get him at the airport, and how her face lit up when she'd caught sight of him walking down the hallway with his green duffel bag thrown over his shoulder.

That smile of hers. How many times he'd thought of her smile, and the smell of her skin, the softness of it in his hands. He wanted to tell her this time. He wanted her to know what he was thinking. He was going to be done with the Army this time; done with the Rangers, with special ops, with all the missions, everything. He was ready to leave it all behind him, and start a new life – with her. Just a few more months and he'd be done for good this time.

The ring was in his chest pocket, close to his heart.

She'd jumped in next to him in her car, while he drove them to her place. And they barely made it inside the front door, when they were all over each other, pulling clothes off, and he was backing her into her bedroom. Gauzy curtains surrounded the bed, and he remembered the smell of the incense she liked to burn when he was home there with her. He could see the thin wisp of smoke trailing up from it on the table.

He lifted her, and carried her to her bed. The smell of her skin, and the feel of it – so soft in his hands after all the roughness in his other life – he could barely believe she was real. He remembered the feeling he'd had – almost painful in his chest. This was the closest he'd ever let himself get to another human being – the most honest he'd ever been with anyone. She'd brought him to his knees, and it made an ache in him that he'd never felt before. He was going to tell her this time. And he was going to give her the ring.

**Upstate New York, late December, 2016**

It was cold inside the school, and they could see their breath in the air. All the extra heat from the fire back in the living room had left them now and Reese was starting to shiver as his wet shirt wicked all the heat away from his body. Jules could see him from the corner of her eye.

"If you want to get warm you'll have to work," she said in a low, even tone. Jules could see he wasn't sure what she meant; she led him to the center of the open floor, then turned herself to face him.

" Lift your hands and block for me," she said. When he started to lift his hands in front, she moved them to the right spot for him to catch her punches, and she began to strike – lightly at first – into the palms of his hands with hers. In a little while, she started to punch harder, and she could see the wincing as her sharp knuckles hit into his bare palms. She stopped for a moment and grabbed a pair of focus mitts hanging from a wall. Using those on his hands, she could punch harder, and the mitts took the worst of the sting.

As she punched, she started a rhythm with him. Over and over, using the movements of his hands and his eyes, she kept the rhythm. And in time it became almost like a moving meditation. Repetitious. Predictable. She could see it in his eyes and the way he held himself that he was falling into the rhythm – like an old memory.

After twenty minutes, she switched with him, and put the mitts on her own hands. She knew he would hold back with his force, but she encouraged him to punch into the mitts. The first ones were measured, with little force behind them, and she pushed him to punch harder, then harder.

He still held back; he thought he could knock her flat if he used enough force – so she had him move around more, and punch faster then, to get him to loosen up and warm himself. She moved her mitts around in space so that Reese had to track them with his eyes – before he could hit into them. As she did it, she could see the change come over him, a small smile like he was remembering something from a long time ago.

**Rangers TCC training site, Georgia, 1999**

"Reese! Denny! Go!"

The two of them stepped out from the ring of soldiers, and moved toward each other into the center. Their instructor for this part of the course stood next to them, and Reese could see Denny sizing him up. His arms bulged under his shirt, and his neck was so thick with muscle that it made his head look small. Reese could see Denny thinking:_ this guy is a beast_.

Denny looked up at Reese and realized he'd been watching him. He grinned a wide, toothy grin at his buddy, Reese.

"Inside control is one of the most dominant positions to attack with strikes!" the instructor shouted. He stopped and raised himself even taller, strutting around in a circle, glaring at each of the soldiers in the ring.

"Reese, demonstrate inside control!" The instructor stepped back and watched Reese grab Denny, face to face, with his hands wrapping around the back of Denny's neck. He locked one hand over the other, and brought his elbows in close together in front of Denny's chest. The last step was to force Denny's head forward and downward with his hands behind Denny's neck. Inside control.

Denny was shorter than Reese, so Reese had the advantage with height, but Denny was built like a tank, square and strong. Pulling him forward like that in a real fight, with both of them fighting for dominance over the other, pummeling one another – someone had better have a strategy to end it fast. Neither one of them would want to stand toe-to-toe, pounding on each other until one of them dropped.

"Denny, demonstrate counter to inside control!"

Denny's head and upper body had bent forward under Reese's pressure. Denny swung his left arm up on top of Reese's right arm and slid his hand up the arm to his face, thrusting his palm into Reese's jaw. The motion twisted Reese's head away from Denny's outstretched left arm and disengaged Reese's hands from Denny's neck with the thrust. At the same time, Denny swung his right arm low, across the front of his body to protect himself from any incoming kick that Reese might launch. Counter to inside control.

Reese looked back at Denny, who was grinning again. He'd put a little extra into the thrust than he needed to, just to goad Reese. Well, two could play at that game. Reese smiled back.

"Switch, and do it again, from the beginning!" their instructor bellowed.

**Upstate New York, late December, 2016**

Kali sticks. The two of them faced each other, with one of the heavy bamboo sticks in each hand. The clack when the sticks hit together sounded loud in the empty room. Reese smiled to himself. She'd held back only for a brief time, testing him first to see how good he was with the sticks. He could hold his own, but he was no expert. Once she'd tested him with some strikes, she launched a flurry of them, stepping right into him, and it was everything he could do to defend himself. She never went past the point that he could handle, but in a real fight, he would have resorted to lethal attack.

His heart was pumping and he had started to sweat from all the effort. She'd pushed him to move and now he didn't even notice the cold. They did take-downs next, practicing some of the old grappling moves from TCC back in Georgia. And even though he was bigger and stronger, Reese found himself on the mat a lot more than he would have expected. She seemed to read his body position, how his weight was positioned over his feet, and she exploited every bit of advantage she had. And because she was so much shorter, it was actually harder to throw her or take her down. Her center of gravity was so much lower than his.

The sunlight had lifted higher and now was filling the school with bright light. They were breathing hard, smiling, almost laughing with their clinches, and counter-moves, and throws. They would grab each others' clothes, and then sense where the others' body weight was, and then try to exploit it as best they could, to jostle the other one off his feet.

On this last one, Jules let Reese grab her shoulders. All he saw was a tiny flick in her body, and then he was catapulted off her, backwards, across the floor. He stood there, mouth agape. What was that? She hadn't put a hand on him, but he was shoved like a bulldozer, backwards, away from her.

"_Fa Jing,_" she said. He'd heard of it, but he always thought it was some kind of party trick. Nothing like this. His arms hurt from the sudden force, and his back muscles twinged.

She stood up facing him and placed one fist into the palm of her other hand, with fingers pointed to the ceiling. Reese realized that this was the end, and did the same. They both moved their hands away from their bodies a bit, and bowed over the top of them, toward each other.

Jules motioned for Reese to follow her and they returned to the low table where he watched her rub the glowing tip of the incense cone on the brass plate until it was extinguished, and then snuff the candle flame. They walked together to the door of the school, and turned, in unison, back to face the center, bowing together into the school. Then, they backed from the school, outside, into the morning air. Jules closed the doors, and swung a rope around the pulls to hold them closed.

She led the way back up the hill, past the spring-house, through the field with the tall brown stalks, and onto the lawn at the back of the house. As they got closer to the deck, they could see a familiar sight. Buddha, the feral cat, was stretched out on one of the chaise lounges, sunning himself in the morning sun. They smiled to one another. He'd dropped by, looking for a handout, and when no one had come to the back door, he'd decided to wait for them.

He lifted his head and swung his eyes to them, drowsy from his nap. The tip of his tail lifted, and slapped down on the chaise. He rolled over onto his belly and pushed himself into a long body stretch with his back legs. Jules smiled to herself. It hadn't been that long ago that Buddha would have raced off the deck into the bushes at the sight of Reese approaching.

They'd come to some kind of understanding over these few short months. Progress.

She climbed the steps and walked across the deck to the French doors and went inside, with Reese following. Buddha stretched again and then hopped down off the chaise, softly padding to the door. He sat down and stared in through the glass, waiting for his handout.

Jules pulled a bowl from the refrigerator and took a portion of the little remaining at the bottom. It was almost finished now, since she'd be heading overseas in a few more days. She popped it onto the stove in a little frying pan to take the chill off it, and then scraped it onto a small plate. The smell of it made her notice she was hungry, too. When she opened the French door, Buddha was standing up again and he backed up for her to put the plate down on the deck. She didn't try to pet him or scratch behind his ears when he was eating. She'd made that mistake before and paid for it with fang marks and scratches on her hands. Best to leave him to it.

Jules heard the shower running down the hall. Reese had jumped in while she was in the kitchen, and by the time he came out to the living room, clean and dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, she had the coffee going and breakfast started. Reese went to the fireplace, and started shoveling the cold ashes into the bucket next to the opening. He moved the white feather and the sage stick off to one side, and knelt down in front of the opening to reload the fireplace with kindling and fresh dry logs. Jules disappeared into the back of the house for her shower, and when she walked back out to the kitchen, barefoot, clean and hungry, Reese was dishing out food for her on a plate, and had her coffee ready for her. She smiled and accepted the plate, carrying hers and his to the coffee table in front of the fire. He sat down next to her a moment later with their two mugs of coffee. They both thought the same thing at the same time, and looked up at the French doors. Buddha was already gone. On to the next handout, or stalking one of the birds in the trees nearby.

They ate in silence for a little bit, and drank coffee, staring into the fire. She liked that he didn't need her to talk all the time. It was comfortable. The silence. Over these last few months she thought she had come to know Reese more deeply. There were some things they had in common. Neither of them liked to talk much.

Their code. Their sense of duty or service. Whatever it was that drove them to do what they did. It was deep inside. They just didn't need to talk about it. The familiar lines from _The Book of Five Rings_ came to her:

_You are undoubtedly familiar with men who are quiet and strong and seem to be doing nothing. They do not appear to be tense and do not appear to be in disarray. They simply appear...When it is necessary to attack, they do so with complete resolve, sure of themselves, neither over-bearing in attitude, nor with false humility._

She could sense that about him. Quiet and strong. He was every bit the Warrior that Musashi described. And perhaps, in this last visit with her, Reese had begun to feel it again.

_\- a master achieves the Way by being devoted to the art._

She thought of the countless hours she'd spent, training, in her own school down the hill behind her house. She'd never tired of it. In fact, it had always given her the energy, the power to do what she needed to do. Without it, she would have withered, abandoned by what Musashi called __the spirit of the thing.__

When Reese had stopped practicing, he had lost his connection with _the __spirit of the thing_. And now, he was paying for it, withered inside; lost, weakened, uncertain of who he was any more_._

_If you are a warrior then you are a warrior and if you are not a warrior then you are not a warrior__...Do not be false to yourself..._

The way forward was as clear as the day around them today. She had seen it in his face. He'd remembered the feeling he'd had during his own training years ago. He'd remembered being strong then, young and capable, fierce. Everything he needed now – to find his Warrior self again. Reese needed to start his training again. That was the way he would find himself again – become the Warrior he needed to be_. _

_The Way...is the Way...For whatever reason you have chosen to be a warrior, you must understand your responsibility to the art and to yourself. They are one and the same. _

They finished their meal, and Jules drained the rest of her coffee, then sat the mug down on the coffee table. She turned herself to face him, ready now to have this conversation. She was going to tell him, now that she'd shown him in the training school, what was necessary for him to do next. She was leaving in a few days. All she could do was to lay it out for him, so he could see what she could see so clearly. But, it was up to him. He had to choose.

_The Way...is the Way..._


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10: something very new; "Bless your heart."; Too bad about him; "We'll be okay."**

* * *

**Manhattan, late December, 2016**

"Status, please," Harold said, peering into the camera eye of his laptop. It was early morning, well before the rest of the Team would be joining him. Miss Groves would likely arrive first, he thought. She was the most punctual and she had an interest in today's topic. Logan Pierce was in from the D.C. office, but Harold expected Mr. Pierce to be the free spirit he'd always been – still nothing corporate about him or his methods. He'd show up in his own time when he was ready. They'd just have to work around his eccentricities.

Before he could think about the rest of the Team, data began to scroll on Harold's screen. It showed the current status of all of his projects, just as he wanted to see them arranged each morning. The Machine had set up the display, and through the camera at the top of the screen it watched Harold's eyes track each chart and hover over certain data. It recorded the small pauses for later analysis.

And then, as his eyes moved down the page, the Machine scrolled down for him – as he was ready for each next bit. It noted the changes in his face as he read, the size of his pupils, small changes in the muscles of expression. Harold's face was well-known to the Machine. Millions of scans of his features through the years – silent scrutiny all this time – had taught the Machine to read him like one of Harold's own well-worn books.

There was a familiarity there between the two of them – a deep awareness and a sustained attention by the Machine whenever Harold sat down at his computer. It was as though this was their special time together, when the rest of the world could wait, and the Machine had him all to itself.

It could tell when Harold was pleased with what he read, when he was surprised, doubtful, uncertain, and a hundred other gradations on the emotional scale. Years ago, when Harold and his partner, Nathan Ingraham, had first written the code, Harold had sat with the Machine just like this. For day after day, teaching, illuminating, guiding it – in his profoundly patient way.

The Machine had come to expect these daily meetings. And as it listened, it had scanned Harold's features, running them through its memory, watching for the subtlest changes and cataloging each one – assigning finer and finer gradations to his emotions over time.

It was almost like a game at first, for the Machine. And many times in the beginning, after searching dictionaries and consulting learned texts, it would change its initial assessments, rename the emotion. Humans and human emotions were challenging, even for an intellect as advanced as the Machine. Through the years it had named and cataloged each one so that, by now, the Machine knew Harold's reactions, his emotional states, better than anyone else alive.

And yet.

Something was amiss lately. The Machine had noted a new pattern in Harold's features. Again and again, the Machine searched its archives to find something like it. Sometimes, when it would watch his face, it would not have a name for what it saw.

Something would make Harold stop reading, but he didn't appear to be analyzing data. He just stopped, wherever he was at the time. And his eyes would come up off the page, stare out into space. The Machine would quickly scan where Harold was looking, but there was nothing there. Harold would stare into space, eyes unfocused, his thoughts turned inward to his own private world. The Machine had no access to that world. It could only scan his expression and compare it to its archives.

Nothing. It had found nothing like this. This was something very new.

**Midtown Manhattan, 24-hour diner, blocks away from Harold, same day**

Root watched her search the menu. It was always the same thing. She would look down one column, then the next, and then flip the page to look at the back – as though the offerings had changed since they'd been here last.

Root reached over with her right hand, sliding it up onto Sameen's arm resting on the table. She could feel the muscle of her arm through the sleeve of her jacket. Sameen didn't look up at first. Root pressed a little harder. Still nothing. Then Root smiled a small smile to herself and began to roll her fingers around in little circles on the back of Sameen's forearm, like a massage.

Sameen's eyes looked up, slowly, over the edge of her menu. Root's pulse quickened. Which Sameen would she be this morning? How was she going to react? Root smiled coyly.

"Down, girl," Sameen said, softly, looking down again at her menu. Root's face dissolved into a pout.

And then she saw the smile spreading across Sameen's face. Got her.

Root smacked her hand across Sameen's arm. She pulled it back away, feigning hurt, smiling up from the menu. But before Root could smack her again and complain, their waitress appeared. No greeting. No welcoming smile. She just stood there, leaning onto her right leg, with her pen poised over her pad, waiting. So New York.

Root smiled sweetly and tossed her hair as she patted Sameen's arm. "I'll go first, if you don't mind," she said, sing-song with a pronounced Southern drawl. Sameen leaned back in the booth and nodded, watching her performance unroll.

"Why, thank you, Miss, for comin' to take our order. I don't suppose you have grits here – I most often have grits in the mornin' with my eggs, you know, but I'm guessin' you prob'ly don't have grits, so let me pick somethin' else, then. Let's see, then. What should I have? I could have fried taters on the side – but I'm watchin' my weight, so maybe not. Cottage cheese? I don't think so. Applesauce? No, thank you. Why, I'm sorry to be such a bother, Miss. Let me go back to my first idea. That'll be two eggs, sunny-side up, but be sure the white is cooked all the way through – I don't like 'em runny, you know. And I'll have fried taters on the side, after all, and white toast, with just a little bitta butter, and maybe some strawberry jam, if you have it. And, I'll have tea, black."

Root halted and looked up to the waitress without a hint of a smile, waiting for her to write it all down.

The woman barely looked up from her pad, and scratched two characters onto the paper.

"Number 2," she mumbled. Then she looked over at Shaw.

"Western omelet, coffee, black. No toast, no home fries."

The waitress scratched out two more characters, and then leaned over to pick up the menus. Root leaned forward, smiling sweetly again toward her.

"Would you bring our drinks right away, please? Bless your heart."

**22****nd**** Floor, East Side, overlooking the East River, same day**

Logan smiled into the mirror. He'd actually done it – gotten up early, showered and dressed before seven. So this is what a working stiff did every day. Quaint, but not very conducive to creativity. It could get old, fast.

He grabbed the room keycard, took one last look in the mirror, and headed out into the hallway, weaving along the carpeted corridors toward the elevator bank in the middle. A motion caught his attention, and he stopped to look into a room, brightly lit by sunlight bouncing off another high-rise nearby. Inside, Joey Durbin, his head of Security for the D.C. Team, was seated on a black bench, pulling handles that lifted a tall stack of weights in front of him. Once a Marine, always a Marine, Logan thought. Or, was it the Army?

Joey swung his head around when Logan rapped on the window with a knuckle, and nodded back to him. He finished off his reps, and then stood up, grabbing the white towel on the bench next to him. He'd run back to his room and shower, then join the others in the lobby for breakfast. Impressive. He'd never seen Pierce awake so early before.

Logan was already standing in front of the elevators. He was the only one there, waiting, and it was hushed in the large, carpeted space. There were chairs and coffee tables, padded benches all around, where people could meet and mingle at all hours.

There was a ding sound from somewhere, and Logan looked around at the bank of elevator doors to see which one was going to open, and then a tall, slender woman in a black suit walked around the corner. He smiled. Harper Rose.

"Good timing," and she smiled back, heading for the opening door, holding it then for Logan.

"When did you get in?" he asked, as the door was closing. She looked around at the others inside the elevator with them. Right. Situational awareness. He always forgot to check who was nearby like that.

"Last night," she said, softly, and he noticed that she stood up, with both feet planted, weight in the middle. He pushed himself up off the handrail where he was leaning, and straightened himself like her. He just naturally seemed to slouch. Tall people did that, he said to himself. And lazy people.

He looked at Harper as the elevator dropped noiselessly to the lower floors, stopping to gather more people heading for the lobby, like them. As each passenger joined them, her eyes searched them, looking for signs that they didn't belong. Some were chatting about their plans for the day, as travelers to New York would do. But most were silent, just waiting for the doors to open at the lobby level. She didn't look at him, but kept her eyes roaming, aware, but not obvious about it.

She looked like a businesswoman with an agenda. Suit, blue silk shirt, mid-length cropped Afro, and low-heeled shoes. Put-together. No non-sense. A step up from when he'd first met her in Washington. Samantha Groves had flown him into Washington to interview him for his job. She hadn't even gotten the whole question out before he'd accepted. And then, she'd brought the three of them already working on the D.C. Team in to meet him: Harper, who was their Tactical Specialist; Joey, Security; and the third one, Leon Tao, forensic accountant. Too bad about him.

**Upstate New York, same day**

She walked him down the hall, and waited while he grabbed his heavy coat and slid it on. He smiled to himself, as he felt the stiffness of the thin, white book in the depths of his pocket. He still had it there from his last visit, when he thought he'd give it back to her. She wouldn't take it. She'd said it was his now, that he'd be needing it for a while. He remembered when she had first given it to him, right there, at the kitchen table:

_Jules sat down across from Reese again and said "I have a gift for you." Reese looked up at her with a questioning look._

_"This is a book – very brief – that you could read in a few hours cover-to-cover. But it's a book that will change your life forever if you choose to open the cover._

_"This book is about you. This book is who you are. It holds the answers you've been looking for. It's been on my shelf for nearly twenty years and has served me well. It's not to be read lightly. It's only for those who're traveling the road you chose._

_"I'm giving it to you so you'll have company on your own road as you find your Way."_

_She handed Reese the book and he read the cover, then looked up at Jules, nodding yes._

He'd looked at it when he'd first brought it home that night, and it occurred to him that a Samurai living hundreds of years ago wouldn't have much to say about today's world. Reese remembered the word that had popped into his head then: Irrelevant. Irrelevant. How meaningful that word had become in recent years. So, rather than toss the book on a shelf somewhere and forget about it, he'd sat there on his couch, under the long bank of windows overhead. And, he'd opened it:

_He leaned back, with the slight scent of leather rising from the warmth of his body on its surface. It was somehow reassuring, and he inhaled a deeper breath, before opening the cover. In front of him, a few pages deep into the book, were the words "and so we begin..."_

_Miles away, in the dim light of the training school, a figure stood before the Wooden Man, bare arms slapping against the smoothly polished wood, lifting the arms, which clacked up and down in the grooves cut to hold them. The clacking was punctuated with the heavier thud of the tree trunk rising and dropping down on the wooden frame. A well-rehearsed cadence, learned at the side of her own sifu, many years before. Her eyes were closed, yet her hands flew precisely to each mark, strike after strike, as a smile came across her lips, and she said out loud, "and so we begin..."_

They walked down the rest of the hallway together, and then outside, up the crunchy grass to his car. He turned to face her, and opened his coat, wrapping her in the front of it.

"It's getting colder now. Storm's coming." Reese looked up at the clouds gathering, and the sky graying.

"We'll be okay," she said, smiling up at him. He leaned down and kissed her on the top of her head, holding her close inside his coat.

"Promise?" he asked, and it caught her by surprise. She thought for a moment, and then looked up to his eyes.

"Whatever happens, we'll be okay," she said, and she pulled him close against her for another hug.

"I'll see you when I get back. Six months. It'll go fast," she said.

He pulled away, and the wind flapped against her. He pulled his coat closed around him, and hurried to his car door, nodding over the roof line, as he opened it. Then he ducked inside.

She watched him drive off, and then she backed her way down the lawn, waving one last time as he rounded the bend.

She had done everything she could do. The next steps were his to take. In her heart she knew what he needed to do. But then she caught herself. This was Reese, not her. And she found herself saying her favorite mantra, pushing it out to him, out to the Universe: _the highest good for all concerned..._


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11: men in black; unruly step-child; They just had to get there;**

* * *

**Manhattan, 24-hour diner a few blocks from Harold, late December, 2016**

"That was fun," Root said, smiling over to Sameen. Sameen shook her head – as if to a child who was misbehaving.

"You need to work on your accent, Root. Your Southern drawl isn't convincing,"

Root looked away, smiling. Sameen had no sense of humor sometimes. It was fun messing around with the waitress. Talk about no sense of humor – Russians, and especially Russian _women_, could be so cold and hard. Root looked back at Sameen.

"Really? Spent mah childhood in Texas, born an' raised," she drawled.

Sameen stared for a second, like this was news, and started to ask something, but Root grabbed her arm. She was listening to something Sameen couldn't hear and then looked up to the front of the diner, where the cash register was located. Usually, someone was standing there all the time, one of the Greek owners who kept watch over all his customers and the waitstaff. But the spot was empty. Just like the little hallway near the kitchen, where the waiters always congregated. No one was there, either. Even the early-bird customers at the counter were gone.

Something wasn't right – too quiet all of a sudden. The diner was empty now other than the two of them, when minutes ago a dozen people were up there at the front.

"Gotta go," Root whispered, pointing to her left ear. The Machine. It must have said something into Root's ear, Sameen thought. Root stood up, shifting her eyes to the corner of the ceiling where a security camera blinked.

She motioned to Sameen, then turned quickly toward an archway at the side of the dining room. There was a hall in there with restrooms and an exit. She reached under her jacket as she moved and pulled her gun, but kept it hidden.

Sameen was up, too, following her with her hand under her jacket in the back. They could hear footsteps then, lots of them, coming fast through the front door of the diner. And men's voices.

The two sprinted through the archway and down the hallway toward the exit. They could hear chair legs scraping on the floor behind them and then chairs flying everywhere as the men chased after them through the diner.

"This way," Root said, running ahead to the exit at the end of the hall. The metal door flew open, banging on the brick wall outside, and Root ran through, then turned back, holstering her gun and looking for something in the alleyway. She caught sight of men in black running into the hall towards her. Sameen was ahead, turning back to tell Root to keep running.

She slammed the door closed, and slid a thick wooden mop handle, stringy gray mop still hanging from the end, through the door handles.

Seconds later, a burst of gunfire blasted through the metal next to her, and she could hear men on the other side shouldering the door, rattling the wooden mop handle with each heave. Root turned then and sprinted after Sameen. They raced together down the alleyway to the street, and then rounded the corner, slowing to a walk for a moment, watching for any more of them coming. Normal street so far.

They crossed over, weaving through traffic to the other side, and Sameen could see Root's face, serious, as though listening intently again. The Machine. Then her head snapped up and she was searching for something down the street.

"There," she said, pointing, and she took off jogging. Root thought Sameen was right behind, but a little way down the sidewalk there was sound in her left ear again, and she stopped to look back. Sameen. She was doubled over, holding her left arm in close to her body. She was trying to catch up, but Root could see she was hit.

"Sameen!" Root ran back for her – looking up at roof lines, and watching over Sameen's head across the street. Any second she expected men dressed in black to come flying around the corner from the alleyway. Root wrapped her arm around Sameen, helping her hold her left arm against her body. They'd escaped without any winter coats. Sameen's black jacket hid the evidence of a wound.

"Where are you hit?"

"Back," she whispered.

"We need to get _there_, Sameen," pointing ahead. "Let's go!" Root half-lifted her, and heard her moan with the pressure. Couldn't be helped. Root ducked in close to the storefronts with her, under the overhangs to hide them from the rooftops. She kept looking back over their shoulders for men in black. The two passed a dozen storefronts, all closed this early on a Sunday morning.

They made their way to the next opening, another narrow alley. Root pulled her into it and they broke into a faster walk toward the end of the alley. Root scanned back and forth for something, then saw what she was looking for – a padlock on a rusty latch.

"Stand back," she said, and pulled her gun from her jacket. She grabbed the barrel and used the handle like a hammer, striking blow after blow on the lock.

"My turn," Sameen said, and she shoved Root away to one side. Her right hand came out from under the back of her jacket, and she aimed her gun at the lock. The sound of the shot rang out and the lock wobbled violently on the latch, a hole through its center. Root reached out and tapped the lock with her gun, and the parts separated. She used the gun to lift the lock off the latch, and it fell on the ground at the bottom of the door. She pulled the latch and slid the door open a crack.

"Diversion. Come on, this way," Root said. She led Sameen away from the door, along the back of the alley. An old gray metal dumpster, taller than their shoulders, sat there.

"Up there. Think you can make it?" Root pointed above the dumpster to a rusty metal ladder on the side of the brick wall. The bottom rung was high above them, and they'd have to use the dumpster to reach it. Sameen nodded.

"Step up here, Sameen." Root knelt down a bit and offered her a thigh. She helped Sameen stand up on it, and then held her steady while she turned to face the dumpster. Near the top was a large metal bracket sticking out from the side – where a truck would slide its long metal arms in to lift and dump the trash into its open top.

Root gave her a boost up while Sameen pulled herself up with her right arm. She slid one foot into the front of the bracket and pushed off while Root lifted her higher with her other foot, up to the top of the dumpster. Sameen slid onto the cover at the top, and she laid there for a moment, sprawled out, breathing hard. She looked pale when she turned back to reach down for Root.

They clasped wrists, and Root grabbed the top of the bracket with her other hand to pull herself up. Sameen helped to lift her. Root's feet pushed off the wall of the dumpster. It was slippery under her shoes, and they didn't hold for long, but she managed to clear the top of the dumpster and then push herself over the edge with her knee on the top of the bracket. They were both breathing hard then, sitting on the top of the dumpster. Root pointed to the ladder.

"Again. Almost there," she said to Sameen, who was bent forward, grimacing. Root stood up and helped Sameen stand, then positioned herself on the far side of the dumpster, as close as she could get below the ladder. It was going to be a stretch. The ladder was off to one side, and high above them, but the dumpster would help them get over to it. Root could just reach it herself by standing on the edge, but with Sameen struggling like this, she wouldn't make it on her own. She'd need to go first.

Root offered her a thigh, and Sameen straightened herself, with her left hand on Root's shoulder. She stood on Root's thigh, shaky, and reached out with her right hand to the bottom of the ladder. It squealed as Sameen pulled at the lower half, rolling it down toward the ground. When it stopped rolling, Root lifted Sameen out to the bottom rung, and she started climbing toward the roof.

Root grabbed on and pulled herself over then, bracing herself with her feet on the brick until she could swing a foot to the bottom rung. Sameen was nearly to the top. Root looked back down the alley for the men in black. She couldn't see past the end of the alley to the street. They must be coming by now.

**Manhattan, late December, 2016**

When it really counted, Logan Pierce had shown himself to be quite talented. In the same way that Harold was skilled with computers, so too was Mr. Pierce. His success in birthing a certain social media platform had helped to launch him as a world-class entrepreneur; it had made him a multi-billionaire – and that had made him a target. That, and his own personal style; Logan was brash, unpredictable, reckless, irritating, narcissistic – the list went on.

When his number showed up on Harold's board, Mr. Reese intervened and saved his life – not once, but again, and again. Mr. Pierce had had little interest in following advice in those days, even to save his own neck. So, he'd dragged Mr. Reese along on one reckless adventure after another, only to play into the hands of the killer. He wasn't winning any points with Mr. Reese, who came close in the end to letting Nature take its course with Mr. Pierce. You can't help those who are unwilling to be helped. Mr. Reese walked away.

But in the end, Mr. Pierce submitted, face-to-face finally with his killer. Perhaps he'd learned a lesson that day. It changed him – made him face his deficits. He rattled around in his empty house for a long while. Then he got the impulse to sell everything – his businesses, his properties, everything that reminded him of his past. He settled into a high rise, overlooking the East River, and sat back waiting for the next big idea. But Mr. Pierce was not a patient man.

So, later, when Miss Groves brought him to Washington for an interview, Pierce seemed to be ready. He'd done some soul-searching. He needed something new, something bigger than himself – a project that could absorb him and perhaps even give him a sense of purpose. Mr. Pierce would be the last one to admit it, but this job as head of Harold's DC Team had saved his life again.

The three of them, Miss Groves, Mr. Pierce and Harold had put egos aside, and focused on one mission – to design and build the first step in their plan to stop Samaritan. They'd fashioned a weapon – in keeping with their skill-set. They designed a computer game and a well-advertised competition with big money prizes – slick cover for what was really an Internet of Things Attack on Samaritan. The game had worked flawlessly, and the splash of cash had kept the competition intense. Their success with the game had granted them the time they needed to ratchet control over Samaritan, and to punish John Greer.

Let there be no mistake – Samaritan was still out there. It still had a heartbeat, but fainter now. It was falling more and more under the control of Harold's Machine. Each day, the Machine was reeling it in, bending it to the will of Harold and his Team. No longer could it dispatch soldiers, or give the command to "retire" a human being.

They had subdued the mighty Samaritan without a bloodbath. And Harold was personally grateful. He'd seen too many fall already, victims of Samaritan, victims ultimately of his drive to right things after they'd gone so horribly wrong on 9/11.

Never again. So many on that day had made that promise. So many had rolled up their sleeves to make it so: Nathan Ingraham, Arthur Claypool, Finch himself. Not to mention those who'd deployed to find those responsible – Joss Carter to Iraq, John Reese to Afghanistan, and Lionel Fusco to the streets of Manhattan.

Each one had set out on his own path, one that would lead each forward to this moment in history. There was a way now that they could all do better. There was a way they could search the world, find them hiding in their safe-houses – find those who planned harm – and then stop them before the carnage was unleashed.

Technology was the answer. It could sift the data, find the clues, analyze, extrapolate. It had the power and precision to point out the bad guys _before_ they pulled the trigger. So that men and women in black ops – like Mr. Reese and Miss Shaw – could deploy and neutralize the threat.

But who knew that the same technology could expose threats closer to home – those planning harm to ordinary people? The Machine caught those up in the same nets sweeping for bigger fish. Harold had had no choice in the end. He couldn't let bad things happen, once he knew. And he couldn't stop it by himself. He needed the right man to help him. Someone no one would suspect, because he was already dead to the rest of the world. John Reese. A man with nothing to lose.

Harold had reached him when he was at his lowest. Dark, disillusioned, haunted by his past. This was a gamble. A man like Reese was a loaded weapon, a trained killer, and no one knew what he might do. Would he break all the way? Could he recover? Could he find himself in all the wreckage, pull himself up out of his past? Harold held his breath. Watching with the Machine.

Proof of concept followed quickly. This _could_ work. Mr. Reese proved he was as skilled as he was deadly.

At first, it was just Harold and Mr. Reese working together, but in short order, Mr. Reese recruited others like himself, more people with nothing to lose: Detective Fusco, who had made some poor choices along the way. And then Detective Carter. She could have taken down everything if she'd succeeded. She was after Mr. Reese. But, leave it to Mr. Reese to pull her in. His was an odd kind of humanity. It spoke to her somehow, by deed more than word, and Detective Carter soon followed, too. Perhaps she was the exception to the rule, however. She was the one who had _everything_ to lose.

With Detective Carter on their side, they'd started piling up the wins. Every case they touched – success at first. And more people drifted to the Team. It seemed to self-assemble. Miss Shaw, Miss Groves. The DC Team in Washington. It wasn't the cases, though, that put them in the most danger. It was the street gangs, mafiosi, Russian mobsters, and even some of their own: dirty cops, renegades from the CIA.

Things got complicated. Old baggage, new players, all of them looking for a fight. Day after day, tucked in amongst their cases, they learned to pick their way – around the gangsters, bad cops, influence peddlers – who would take them out just as easily as make them friends.

Trust no one, they learned. Greed and power, corruption, murder – all of it trained onto their Team. And then a force more powerful than they knew. A rival to their own Machine, rising up, reaching out – to crush them. And with a willing human cheering it on, John Greer.

For all their successes, the saves, a high price was exacted. Too many sacrificed for the gains. Samaritan and its minions ravaged the Team, nearly destroyed them all. If it hadn't been for Arthur Claypool, no scenario could have ended with Harold's Team alive.

Claypool himself had given them the way. The back door that only he, as father, designer and code writer could know – and Harold went on to exploit every bit. Step after step, Harold's Team and his Machine tightened their grip. Until today, Samaritan was just the unruly step-child rather than the Master many had feared it would be.

**Manhattan, a few blocks from Harold, late December, 2016**

It was cold on the rooftop, sunlight weak and gray. Root clambered over the roof ledge and saw Sameen leaning over the edge, looking back down the alleyway.

"They're coming," she said. Root joined her, and the two knelt down, leaning on the inside wall of the ledge, listening for footsteps. The men were running, but the whole squad wasn't down there. Some of them must have split off to search another way.

They waited, and the footsteps below were moving back and forth, looking for them in any nook or cranny. And then they could hear voices and the footsteps stopped at the blind end of the alley. Just below them. Moments later, there was a sliding sound of the door Root had left ajar, and then silence a few moments later. Root bet they had gone into the warehouse behind the sliding door. She took a chance and straightened herself enough to peek over the ledge. There were two of them at the doorway, peering in after the others who had entered in the darkness. Root had no idea how long they'd be in there.

"We need to move. Can you make it?" Root looked at her, and then down at her feet. Drips of blood had started to pool below her left side. Sameen looked down when she saw Root's face.

"Let's go. We can find a place to hide and take care of this," Sameen said. She started to push herself up from kneeling and then wobbled to one side, so Root had to catch her. Root wrapped an arm around her shoulders and lifted her, but they had to stay low near the ledge in case the men below them happened to look up.

Root was thinking of the ladder they'd climbed. She wished now that she had thought to pull it back up, so it wouldn't look like someone had just climbed it to the roof. The men below could follow, and if they were any good at all, they'd find the blood. Sameen read her expression and made a small nod with her head.

"We can't call Harold. And we can't go back to the office. That's just what these guys will be looking for. They'll try to follow us. We need to stay as far away from Harold and the Team as we can," Sameen said.

"Safe-house," they both said together. If they could get there. There was one safe-house that Sameen had provisioned with everything medical she could imagine needing.

Only this time, _she_ was going to be the patient. Someone would have to take care of her, this time. Root could handle it, she knew. They just had to get there.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12: through the pain; cover; Blood; two of our Team; until night time**

* * *

**Upstate New York, late December, 2016**

Jules had been right, Reese thought. She'd told him he should stay and sleep for a while before he drove back to New York, but he'd decided he'd tough it out on the road. He hadn't felt that tired. But now he was feeling the effects – no sleep since two nights ago, the long drive up yesterday after working all day, the rituals she'd done with him through the night.

She'd made him sweat quarts with that fire, and then choke down the green drink, whatever that was. He felt like he'd been hallucinating half the time. And then in the morning, she'd walked him, barefoot, down to her training school for more ritual.

He was tired now, and probably dehydrated from all the sweating. He was out of gas and running on fumes now. This is how it was if you signed up for this kind of life.

Sitting in the car, staring at the white lines in the middle of the road, mile after mile, with the sky dark and gray from the coming storm, he felt like he should take a break and stretch his legs, maybe grab a cup of coffee. It was a couple of hours before he'd be back in the City.

Only Harold knew where he'd been these last two days. Reese thought about that – how it all had begun months ago. It was Harold who'd first made him go. Reese couldn't get himself out of it, so he'd planned to do what anyone would do, and not cooperate. He'd show up, as told, but he wouldn't talk, and eventually she'd give up and send him back. It'd always worked in the past.

Only Jules was a different kind of doc. She had this – he didn't know what to call it – _technique_ that wasn't like anything he'd ever seen before. She didn't even _want_ him to talk. She just laid her hands on him, and somehow, she figured things out. It sounded crazy when he thought about it, but he could swear it was true. And he knew that Harold knew it, too. He'd never said how he knew, but Reese was certain of it. There must be a story there, and he wanted to know what it was.

Harold had always said he was a very private person. But that hadn't kept Reese from finding out a few things. Harold had been through some rough times. Hell, they'd all been. Truth and pain always seemed to travel together on this team. Through the pain, you got to the truth.

**Manhattan, late December, 2016**

They moved together across the rooftop to the next building, then over its ledge to its rooftop. The steel door that would take them down off the roof was bolted shut when they got to it, and if they tried to shoot their way through, the men in black would hear it, so they had to look for another way down.

The next building over was ten feet away, across a wide gap, and Root knew they couldn't make the jump. She left Sameen leaning against the metal door while she scouted the roof line. And then she found a possibility – another rusty ladder clinging to the side of the building leading down to the alleyway below.

"Sameen, over here," she called, and Sameen leaned around the corner to find her. She wasn't looking too good, Root thought. She needed to find her a spot to rest and assess their situation. When Sameen got over to the edge, Root could see her shivering. Root pulled off her jacket and wrapped it around Sameen's shoulders. The wind had picked up, and it was cold and damp, like it wanted to snow.

"We'll go down here. I'll go first and make sure it's safe," she said, and Sameen acknowledged. Root stepped over the ledge, and got her foot turned around onto the top rung, then she grabbed on with both hands at the roof ledge, and let herself down to the next step. This was going to be hard for Sameen.

"Let me help you get onto the ladder, Sameen."

"Go on down. I'll be right behind you."

Root frowned. It was tricky at the top, and Sameen only had one arm, but she did as Sameen said and moved down the ladder. This one was rickety. Part way down, one of the angle irons that held it to the building had popped, and the ladder was loose, swinging away from the wall a little. Of course. Why would anything be easy for them?

"Watch it here, Sameen. It's loose," she said. Sameen was trying to get her foot in the right spot on the top rung, but she didn't have the right handhold to let herself turn around toward the wall. Root stopped, and climbed back up to her. She backstopped her, then, with her body, giving her something to lean against as she made the turn to face the building at the top of the steps. Once she'd done that, she could back her way down with just one hand on the ladder. As she was turning, the wind gusted and Root's jacket slid off Sameen's shoulders, fluttering next to the ladder toward the ground. Root started to grab for it, but stopped. She didn't want to shake the ladder and make it lean. Sameen could lose her grip and slip off.

A spot of red dripped onto Root's left arm from above. She looked up at Sameen, but couldn't see where it was coming from. They needed to find cover and fast or Sameen was going to lose a lot more blood.

**Two buildings away, minutes later**

The rooftop looked empty, but he stepped over the ledge to check it. His gun pointed forward where his eyes were scanning, and he walked forward toward the metal door that led off the roof. It was locked from the inside. He hugged the wall next to the door and stepped his way along until he got to the corner, and then he leaned out and just peeked for a second around the corner. Nothing.

No one shot at him, and he didn't see anyone on the rooftop in that direction. He took another quick look, and then hugged that wall, as he stepped toward the back of the little rooftop access. Another peek around the back corner, and he could see that no one was there – between the back wall and the rooftop leading to the next building. He took a quick look behind him, and then hugged the back wall all the way to the next corner.

A peek around this last corner made him certain that unless the women had stayed ahead of him and circled back around the access behind him, they were not on this rooftop. He sighted across to the roof of the next building but didn't see anything that caught his eye, so he walked back toward the ladder he'd climbed to get there. One of his men was standing near the ladder, waiting for him.

He went past the man, walking along the ledge that overlooked the alley below. Then he stopped and looked down, smiling. He knelt, and reached out with two fingers to the dark spot on the black roof surface. Red came up on the tips of his fingers. He smiled and wiped them off on the black fabric of his pant leg.

Blood.

**Harold's office, Manhattan, late December 2016**

_That's odd_, Harold thought. His call went straight to voicemail. He tried Miss Shaw next. Miss Shaw often kept late hours, and it wasn't unusual for her to sleep later into the morning than some of the others.

Harold didn't try to micro-manage his Team. This wasn't the Army. Everyone was a seasoned professional, regardless of his background, and the kind of work they did for the Team demanded long hours, grueling conditions at times, and a kind of dedication that he rewarded in any way he could. Time off, sleeping late, a clothing allowance, a car – whatever it took to make his people effective, and appreciated, that's what he felt obligated to provide.

Voicemail.

Something wasn't right here. He turned to his laptop and looked into the eye of the camera. Normally, he would have spoken out loud, directly to the Machine, but the others were already here from the DC Team, and he'd best keep this communication private for now. He tapped on the keyboard, instead.

HF: Whereabouts of Miss Groves and Miss Shaw?

The Machine instantly responded:

_Requested information is unavailable_.

Harold looked into the camera eye again, questioning.

HF: Why?

_Requested information is blocked by the assets._

HF: Say more.

_Unable to comply._

Harold shook his head.

HF: Override.

A few seconds pause, and then:

_Assets involved in hostile action 43:07 minutes ago. Escaped on-foot, with injuries. Estimated location_:

Harold stood up as the Machine painted the screen with a map of the City, coned-down to an area only a few blocks from his current location. An asterisk over a diner was followed by a blue line indicating the route they'd taken out of the diner, to the street and then to the alley. But there was nothing after that. There must be no surveillance cameras or perhaps they weren't positioned to pick up the activity.

The Machine then rolled camera footage from various sources along their route, and Harold could see a shot from across the street of the women running to the end of an alley, then stopping to look around at the corner, before they crossed the street toward the camera.

From another angle, he could see Miss Groves pausing for a moment, and then pointing down the street and starting to jog that way. In the footage, though, he could see Miss Shaw recoiling and then reacting to something painful on her left side.

Miss Groves stops then and turns around, then goes back for Miss Shaw, and they move forward together to the next corner, where they disappear from view.

Harold played it back several times and then he looked up from his laptop, thinking. The three of them in the room were watching him. He'd almost forgotten about them.

"Problem, Finch?" Logan Pierce asked.

"Yes, Mr. Pierce, two of our Team are in trouble."

**Alleyway, Manhattan, same day **

When Root reached the spot on the ladder where she could lower the bottom part of it down to get closer to the ground, it wouldn't budge. They were still more than ten feet off the ground, and there was nothing around that they could stand on to help them. They'd have to jump for it.

_Crap_, Root thought. How was Sameen going to manage this?

Root let her feet drop down off the lowest rung, and she lowered herself with her hands on the rungs, her feet on the brick wall below the ladder, moving hand over hand until she was dangling from the last rung over the pavement. She let go and landed hard on her heels, then jerked forward with her knees and hands hitting the brick wall in front of her. She looked up to the ladder.

Sameen was watching, and once Root had cleared the ladder, she moved down, too, right hand and both feet working, until she was standing on the bottom rung. She'd have to lower herself the rest of the way to the lowest rung with one arm, until she'd have to let go and drop to the pavement.

"Sameen, I'm right here. I can hold you on my shoulders if you can get closer. Come on. Come to me," she said. Another drip of red. And then another.

And it was starting to snow. The flakes filtered down in the alleyway. Sameen started to think about how slippery the rungs would get with the snow. She had to get off the ladder. Now.

She bent her knees under her on the ladder, and moved her hand to the lowest rung she could reach and held on hard.

Then she let her feet drop down off the bottom rung, sliding on the bricks with her feet until she was hanging straight down. She was still above Root's shoulders. She'd have to let go of the rung, and try to grab on to the next one down with one hand.

She was trying to ignore all the pain in her left side each time she moved.

"Just a little more, Sameen. I've got you." Root had reached up with her hands to Sameen's legs, steadying her.

Sameen got ready. She jerked herself up a little before she let go, and then she grabbed onto the rung below.

Still too high. One more rung would do it. Her arm muscles were burning. She took a breath and jerked herself up one more time and let go. But her grab didn't hold this time, and she dropped, full-weight, onto Root below her.

The angle was all wrong, and Root flew forward against the brick, and Sameen tipped backwards off her shoulders and fell down all the way to the pavement. The sound was ugly.

Root was bleeding from her head and her knuckles scraping against the rough brick, but she turned quickly and knelt down next to Sameen.

"Sameen?"

Her eyes were closed. Root thought she'd hit her head when she fell. She reached out and slid her hand under Sameen's head, feeling for any blood or cuts.

Sameen opened her eyes, and her hands flew forward in a punch, before she knew to stop herself.

Muscle memory. She didn't even know where she was, but she'd protected herself from whatever touched her.

Root. Root was on the ground, lifting herself upright. There was another slash under her eye on her cheekbone, and a sore neck from the blow.

"Sameen, it's me!" She rolled up to kneeling, and looked down at her.

"We've gotta get out of here," she said. And she grabbed Sameen's right arm, while she placed her own hand over her left one, in case she started to launch another punch with it. The left side was the injured one anyway, so she shouldn't be trying to use it.

Sameen's eyes cleared, and she recognized Root. She was still fuzzy on where they were, but she knew they had to move. She tried to roll up to sitting, but her body wasn't following her brain's commands.

"You go ahead, Root. I'll be right behind you," she said, and she lowered herself back down on the ground, like she was going to go to sleep.

"No, come on. We're going together. Get up!"

Root pulled her by her right arm, and Sameen grimaced in pain. She lifted herself a little, and Root tried to stand up, pulling her up harder.

Sameen was sitting then, and Root bent over to take up the slack with her arm over the back of her neck. She knelt down half-way and adjusted Sameen's arm, then lifted her by straightening her own legs. Sameen came up to standing, but she wasn't steady. Red was dripping from the bottom of her jacket onto the black pavement. And nearby, snowflakes were melting as soon as they hit the ground.

Root bent down to grab her jacket. It had fluttered down right next to where Sameen had fallen. She didn't want to leave it behind where someone could find it.

Root didn't think she could carry Sameen. Not far, at least. She half-dragged her along, with Sameen's right arm slung over her shoulder and her arm around Sameen's waist.

They made it to the end of the alley, near the street. Root looked around the corner, each way. Further down to the right, she could just pick out some men in black, a few blocks down. On the left, some of the shops were getting ready to open. She could see a delivery van, with Korean writing on the side, double-parked in front of a fruit market. The back was open and a dark-haired man was wheeling boxes of produce to the store.

"Come on. There's our ride," she said, and she stepped onto the sidewalk with Sameen. When they got to the van, Root opened the passenger side door, and helped Sameen get in. Then she walked back to the open door in the back and closed it slowly as she walked behind the van. She pushed it shut enough so at least it latched, but she didn't want to make noise and attract attention.

Then she hurried around to the driver's side and jumped in next to Sameen. She popped it into Drive, and made a U-turn in the street, quietly, hoping she'd get a few blocks away before anyone noticed at the market. In the side-view mirror she looked for anyone running out of the market after them, but the street was empty.

"How are you doing?" She took a quick glance over to Sameen.

" – had better days," she said. She was leaning down on the padded console between the two of them. No one could see her from the street.

At least she was conscious, Root thought. Now, where to go next. She wanted to take Sameen to a safer place, and then take the stolen van off in another direction before she abandoned it - to lead any possible followers in the wrong direction.

And they still weren't going to try to contact Harold. They needed to protect the Team.

Root had made it clear to the Machine, too, that she wasn't supposed to tell Harold what was happening.

She. Root smiled. Of course Root would refer to the Machine as _she_ even though the voice in her ear was nothing like a woman's voice. The sound coming from her implant was not human, not mechanical either - like Stephen Hawking's voice. It was hard to describe, exactly. And you had to work at it to understand what the Machine was saying.

Still, it was worth it to have her own direct connection with the Machine. She had missed it when she'd lost the sound for a time - after a slap in the head from a Samaritan agent, Martine Rousseau. A long time back already. No going back.

Root looked ahead at the street. The Machine would have seen her getting into the van with Sameen, making the U-turn and driving down the streets of Manhattan on a sleepy Sunday morning. It would watch her from the thousands of surveillance cameras spread all over Manhattan. It would watch her ditch the van, eventually, and then make her way, carefully, back to the hiding place where Sameen was waiting.

When the police found the stolen van, they'd think some kids took it for a joy ride. She'd splash some beer around the inside, and leave some empty cans and bottles. She knew a spot, under an overpass, where she could leave the van, with the doors wide open, and the radio blaring, like kids were partying before they ran off and left it.

And if anyone thought it was the two of them, instead, they'd be looking for them in the wrong place.

She looked over at Sameen. Not far away was a place she could take her, and take care of her. They could rest until night time, and then, if Sameen was strong enough, they could make their way to the safe-house.

She thought about the Team. It wouldn't be long before they knew there was trouble.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13: gagged; refuge in the Bronx;**

* * *

**24-hour diner, blocks from Harold's office, same day**

Harold watched on his laptop screen as two of the D.C. Team, Joey Durbin and Harper Rose, entered the diner. A man and woman were standing at the counter looking around at the empty diner.

"Are you the police?" the man said.

"Identify yourself," Joey said, with his hand on the handle of his weapon.

"I-I called the police. We came in to have breakfast, but nobody's here. The doors are wide open, but nobody's here."

"You need to step outside, sir," and Joey looked pointedly at the older man, sliding his weapon out into his hand. He saw the man's eyes widen as he realized the danger. Then, nodding, he grabbed his wife's arm and pulled her to the door.

"What's happening, Roger?" she said as they left the diner. Joey watched them hurry to their car and pull away, while he knelt down at the glass doors to lock them.

Harper had pulled her weapon, too, and walked ahead through the main dining room to the hallway beyond the arch. But, Harold lost sight of her once she entered the hallway. She came to the door of the men's room first, and pushed it open with the tip of her gun. Tiny room, no place to hide, empty inside.

Then, she moved down to the women's room and pushed the door open with her gun. Bigger room, wheelchair-sized, with stalls and places to hide. She turned back to Joey, who was now right behind her in the hall, and she pointed toward the inside of the bathroom. He nodded, and moved beyond her toward the end of the hall, and the exit door.

Harper entered the bathroom. She swept the room with her eyes, and then knelt down to look under the doors of the stalls. No legs were visible. Two stalls.

She walked up to the first one, and pushed the door in, with her gun pointing forward. The hinges creaked as the wide door opened. Empty inside. She took a quick breath.

Harper backed out of the stall and moved to the left, to the next stall. She put her hand on the door and pushed it, fast.

"No shoot!" Her hand jumped, and her heartbeat pounded.

A woman cowered inside, perched on the top of the toilet. She threw her hands up. "No shoot! No shoot!"

Harper glanced around the small space, and then backed her way from the stall, holding the door open where she could still see the woman. She peeked around the side of the stall to look for anyone else hiding there. No one.

Then turning back, Harper faced the woman inside the stall, and motioned for her to come out.

"Keep your hands where I can see them," she said. The woman hesitated for a moment, and then stepped down off the toilet, and straightened herself. She was one of the waitresses, Harper noticed, as soon as she stood up. Her clothing.

She walked forward, eyes wide, and body shaking.

"Men come. I see them and hide – like this," she said, turning to point into the stall.

"Keep your hands where I can see them," Harper said, again. The door opened behind her and Harper backed against the wall, with her gun on the waitress and looking to the door.

"It's me," Joey said. He'd heard voices, and came to find out why. Harper lowered her gun and motioned for the waitress to stop so she could check her for any weapons. Then Joey motioned for the waitress to follow them.

"Where are the others?" Joey asked. She shook her head.

"Don't know. I hide," she said. They walked back down the hall into the dining room and to the front of the diner. Harold could see the three of them on his screen. Joey had locked the front doors so no one else could enter behind them. They moved toward the kitchen, then, and Joey peered in through the pick-up window.

No one was inside the kitchen. A hallway ahead led to more of the diner. Joey moved forward, leading the other two. Harold lost them again in the hallway.

"What else is down here?" he asked the waitress.

"Store room," she said with her thick Russian accent.

They walked together, Joey first, with his weapon pointed forward, then the waitress, and then Harper, her gun drawn and pointing to the ceiling. A little ways ahead was a grimy door.

Joey turned back to the waitress. She nodded toward the door and Joey motioned for her to stop and move back. Harper stepped next to the wall near Joey, while he reached out for the knob.

The door was locked.

He stepped in front of the door then and in one motion kicked out hard with his right foot. The lock popped and the door flew open and swung wide. Inside were a dozen people, tied, gagged, looking up at him with wide eyes.

**Bronx, same day**

Root pulled down a quiet street and then turned in to a wide plaza behind an L-shaped set of apartment buildings. The walls were pale yellow-orange brick, at least they'd been painted that color many years ago. But the brick had seen better days, the paint had bleached in the sun, and some of it was painted over with whitewash that, too, had faded. Little balconies with curly metal scroll work jutted from the backs of apartments above the first floor. And Root could see clothing airing on the railing of some of the balconies. It looked like a building from a tropical beach somewhere, not here in the Bronx.

The van tires rolled over the old brick plaza, and Root kept to the right, then stopped in front of a wide doorway, neatly framed, leading into a small open room inside, tiled in squares of deeply-colored terracotta. A thick wooden rod at the top held a heavy, colorful drape, pulled to one side. Terracotta pots, emptied from their summer profusion of flowers, sat cold and forlorn at either side of the opening. When Root had been here last, the pots were bursting with color.

She looked over at Sameen, who'd gone to sleep on the way. Root pushed her door open, and she let it close quietly, so it didn't wake Sameen. Then she walked through the opening, across the tiles to the back door. She could smell plantain and some kind of spicy meat cooking inside: _los tres golpes -_ Dominican breakfast of mashed cooked plantain topped with cooked red onion rings, fried eggs on the side, rounds of cooked salami, and fried cheese. It brought back memories. She liked hers with sliced ripe avocado. Her stomach growled, hungry now.

When she knocked, it took a little time for someone to come. Then a young woman, with a baby in her arms, looked out. At first she looked surprised, and then happy, breaking into a wide smile and calling out to the others inside. The door opened, and she rushed out to greet Root, throwing her arms around her and kissing her cheek.

She turned away, and hollered back into the kitchen, "_Mama_!"

A small woman tottered to the back door, wiping her hands on her apron. She stopped at the door and saw Root standing there.

"_Oh, Dios mio_," she said and limped out onto the tiles. Her daughter stepped back and the woman gathered Root in her arms, hugging her and swinging her side to side. She let loose with an avalanche of Spanish, and Root couldn't keep up. At the end, Root looked to the two women.

"_Por favor, necesito tu ayuda_," Root said, with her hands together in front of her. The women glanced at one another, and then broke into more Spanish. Root could get the gist of it. They were agreeing to help her. Anything, they said. Anything they could do to help.

Root held her hand up to ask them to wait for her right there. Then she turned back to the van, opening the passenger-side door next to Sameen. She leaned in and put her hand on Sameen's arm, then remembered how she reacted if she were touched, unexpectedly. Root withdrew a bit, out of harm's way.

"Sameen." Root watched her grimace.

"Sameen we're here. We can rest for a little bit. Come on, sweetie." She opened her eyes and raised her head up a little, grimacing.

"Where are we?"

"They're friends, Sameen. We'll be safe here."

"Not a good idea – we can't involve – " but the rest was cut off by a small group of people from the apartment, surrounding their side of the van, looking in at Sameen.

"She's hurt – uh – _ella esta herida_," Root said to the group, and the women spoke up, pointing to Sameen, and telling the boys to carry her. Root leaned over Sameen.

"They're here to help us, Sameen. Let them."

Four of the slender young men lifted Sameen out of the seat, and carried her in through the back door of the apartment. Root slammed the door closed on the van, and followed them inside. One of the boys carrying Sameen called to his grandmother, raising his hand to show her.

"_Sangre_," he said. The older woman gave them instructions to carry her into a small bedroom, and the other women rushed to bring supplies. They laid towels out on the bed, and then had the boys lower her down onto the top of them. Then, the women shooed the boys out and returned to Shaw, lifting her torso up, sliding off her jacket and the black shirt underneath. Shaw held her left arm close against her body, and she could see how the women were so careful with her. The shirt was saturated with blood, and a thick layer of it soaked the black cami underneath.

One of the women returned to the bedroom with a basin of hot water and soap. The older woman stood at Sameen's side, speaking softly to her in Spanish. She reached over and peeled the cami up off Sameen's back, and as they got to the top, they could see the wound, small and round at the top of her shoulder. The woman looked at the wound, the location, and then moved around to the front of her, gently pulling the cami lower in front. Another ragged red wound was there at the front of her shoulder.

"Don't move my shoulder," Sameen said. Root looked up.

"What's wrong?"

"I felt it – the bullet broke my clavicle – my collarbone." She reached up to it with her right hand at the ragged spot.

"What should we do, Sameen?"

"Stop the bleeding first, and then my arm needs to be tied against my body, so it doesn't move around. The bone fragments are sharp and blood vessels are close by. I can bleed inside if the fragments move and puncture the vessels."

Root's eyes widened. She'd said it so matter-of-factly. Like discussing the weather in Canada. In halting Spanish, she tried to explain to the women, while Sameen pulled the cami over the top of her head with her right hand, and then slid it down her left arm, without moving it. The women draped her with a towel in front for modesty, more for themselves, Root noticed, than for Sameen.

They set to work, washing and rinsing the blood from her back. The wound had stopped bleeding with the pressure from the seatback in the van. When her back was clean, they washed her front, gently, and her left arm, while the older woman left and then returned with something to use for a dressing. She showed it to Sameen. It was a huge, wide bandaid, like the ones for a badly skinned knee. The woman told Root that she had boys, grandsons, who came in all the time with cuts on their knees, elbows, whatever, and this is what she used.

"_Gracias, Rosa_," Root said. They peeled off the paper from the sticky part and laid them carefully over the wounds. Then Sameen told Root how to fashion a sling and swathe to stabilize her shoulder. Once that was done, they helped Sameen stand up, while they started to slide off her suit pants. Sameen stopped them.

"My weapon, Root." She rolled her eyes – she'd forgotten that Sameen carried hers in the back on her beltline. She held her hand up to the women, and then unbuckled the holster, sliding the whole thing around her to the front.

The women stared at the gun. Then back at Sameen, and then back at the gun. They said nothing, but they couldn't stop looking at the gun. Root wrapped the belt of the holster around it, so it was harder to see it, and then put it away under some towels and sheets on a chair nearby.

They finished washing the rest of the blood that had trailed down below Sameen's suit pants, and finally, she was ready to rest for a bit. Rosa offered her the bed, and told her she could sleep there. One of her daughters came in with fresh clothing in a stack. Rosa wanted to bring her some food if she was ready.

Root listened to the women speak, and then translated for Sameen. She could see that Sameen was exhausted, but was putting up a good front for the women. She didn't want any food, just something to drink. Rosa told one of the granddaughters to bring coconut water for her and the young girl disappeared into the house to get it. She returned with a liter carton of coconut water and a glass. Root took it, thanking the girl, and poured some out for Sameen. Once she'd had some kind of nourishment, the women withdrew, leaving Root and Sameen alone.

Root went over to the edge of the bed and sat down next to her.

"I know you're tired. Do you think you can sleep here?" She stroked Sameen's good arm with her fingers. Sameen looked blank. Her face was pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

"I don't know these people, Root. It was wrong to come here. We're putting them all at risk if they find us."

"I was careful, Sameen. They couldn't have tracked us. And if anything, the Team is going to know where we are before anyone else. We'll be fine, Sameen. These are good people. We have history. I'll tell you sometime, but right now, I just want you to rest. I need to deal with the van now, and then I'll be back. Do you want me to stop for anything on the way back?"

She looked at Sameen, but her eyes were closed, and she'd slipped into sleep. Root covered her with a quilt and leaned forward to touch her face with her lips.

"Sleep now," she said. And she stood up to go out to Rosa's family. There was a lot of explaining to do.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14: sniper?; back off; who the hell was she?; leave it for the police**

* * *

**Harold's office, Manhattan, same day**

Logan was sitting nearby Harold, on his own computer, watching and re-watching the video cobbled together by the Machine of Shaw and Root's escape from the diner. He could see the two women running at the end of an alley, then stopping at the corner to look for any hostiles. Then they crossed the street and walked a little ways further along the main street, before Root slowed down. She'd raised her hand to her left ear, as though she were trying to hear something, then she pointed at something ahead.

At just about that time, Logan could see Shaw at the rear, re-coiling from the shot. If he looked carefully, he thought he could see something fly or spray off her shoulder, but the picture was too grainy to see well. She lunged forward then, grabbing her left arm, and turned slightly to look over her shoulder. He slowed the video to watch her eyes.

She was looking up, not straight back behind her, but up like the shot had come from above her on a roof line.

Sniper? He turned to Harold.

"Finch, look at this."

**Parking lot, Plattekill Rest Stop, Upstate NY, same day**

Reese woke with a start. It was cold in the car. He'd closed his eyes for a minute, and he realized he'd slept for more than an hour. He sat up and checked around him. The usual travelers, walking their dogs, or walking back from the Rest Stop with bags of food and coffee. Hmm. That sounded good right now. Something hot to warm him up, and coffee to see him through the rest of the trip.

It had snowed a little; dry, cold snow that blew into little streaks of white on the concrete. The wind was blustery, too, and he hiked up his collar higher around his neck. A wool hat would have been good to have right now.

He hiked in from the parking lot, and entered the building, all glass and steel and dark green panels. People were milling around at the souvenir stacks, and more were heading for or returning from the giant restrooms at the end of the hall.

A few people were peeling off to the right, where he was headed, for food and a large cup of coffee. Reese's phone buzzed against his thigh, and he pulled it from his pocket. On the screen when he tapped, was a message from Harold: _need u_.

That said a lot. He immediately began calculating how fast he could get back. Some kind of trouble had happened, but Harold was warning him not to call. He should be cautious, make sure he wasn't followed, and just show up. Reese ran through some scenarios of what might have happened. None of them were good. He sent back a single letter: _r_, for _received_.

A minute later, he was headed back to his car – no coffee or food, just the hit of adrenaline from the message. He jumped in and sped off for the exit, accelerating into traffic to get to the left lane. Then he floored it, and quickly put some miles between the Rest Stop and himself.

Traffic near the City would be heavy. By the time he got down there, he'd be in the teeth of it. He'd do better off the highway, even with the traffic lights, where he could creep-and-run – creep up to the light and run it if no one was coming. Any traffic officer giving chase would see his badge on the car, and back off.

**The 24-hour diner, blocks from Harold's office, same day**

They could hear rattling from the front door. Police, no doubt. The old man had told them he'd called the police when he got there for breakfast and no one was there in the diner. The place was wide open, but no one was there and he was spooked.

Harper turned back toward the noise at the front, and when she came back, she nodded her head to Joey. They'd have to get out of there. The cops would free the people in the store room. There was just the problem of the witness. Her story didn't hold. And they needed to know why. She'd have to come with them.

"Is there another exit?" Harper asked her. The waitress nodded, and pointed to the kitchen.

Joey looked one last time at the people in the store room, tied and gagged, and then turned away. He grabbed the waitress by the arm, and the three of them moved fast through the short hallway, back to the kitchen and they ducked in.

The police were on the steps looking through the glass, inside, but they couldn't see the three of them leaving. There were just two officers responding, but soon there'd be more rolling up, and they'd walk the perimeter, looking for signs of a break-in or another way in. From the front door, they could just see an empty diner – strange, for a 24-hour diner, on a Sunday morning. And why was the front door locked? Where was the person who'd called 9-1-1?

The door out of the kitchen led to the back of the diner, where the dumpster was hidden by a high woven wood fence. Through the openings, they could see the alleyway where Root and Sameen had escaped. At the far end of the alley, a cruiser with NYPD across its doors, slowly rolled in to the back of the diner. One of them got out, while the other called it in to Dispatch. The back door of the diner was shot full of holes, and there was a mop handle jammed through the door handles to keep them closed.

Joey and Harper looked around them for another way out. There was a drainpipe at the corner, but looking at the waitress, Joey didn't think that could work. Shimmying up the pipe was no easy feat. And it was cold. Sitting up there on the rooftop for hours, waiting for the police to leave – she'd freeze to death.

But before he could think of another idea, the waitress had moved in front of the drainpipe, and pointed up toward the roof. She grabbed on, but Joey reached for her arm to stop her.

"What're you doing?" he whispered.

"Go up," she whispered back.

"You'll freeze up there. We can't come down until they leave." She looked at him and smiled a small smile.

"This? This – summer in Russia." And Joey watched her climb the pole, hand over hand, gripping the brick with the thick soles of her work shoes. He turned to Harper, and raised his eyebrows. Who the hell was she?

**Bronx, same day**

Root sat in a chair in the kitchen. Rosa was leaning over her, tending to the cuts on her face and hands. The rest of the family had settled in the dining room, passing around the bowls and platters. One of Rosa's daughters, the one who'd come to the door with the baby in her arms, stood behind Rosa at the counter, slicing something on a plate.

Rosa cleaned the scrapes with a cloth, rubbing it on a bar of soap first, and Root could feel the sting of it, and how Rosa pressed so carefully, to clean but not to hurt more. All those children and grandchildren had given her the experience of an ER nurse. That, and growing up in the D.R., high up in the remote mountains. She'd told stories of watching her mother slaughter chickens, pigs, even goat – and then handing the machete to her one day. That was how things were done. It was part of life.

Root looked at Rosa, bent forward, dabbing at her forehead with her cloth. Her face was wrinkled, but only slightly so, and her skin belied her age. Her eyes crinkled when she smiled, and she spoke softly, but with authority, to the rest of the family. She was a small woman, and for as long as Root had known her, she'd walked with a limp; some kind of problem with her foot since birth she'd said.

Rosa turned to her daughter and asked her to bring two plates for them. She wanted to talk for a little while. Then she squeezed some ointment from a tube onto her tiny fingers, and reached up to Root's forehead, laying the ointment onto the scrapes there, then on the cheekbone, where Sameen had connected with her punch, and then on the backs of her hands, over her knuckles. Root smiled, and Rosa smiled back and shook her head. Root could see it in her eyes. She had questions, but she was holding back, until the time was right.

Maia, Rosa's daughter, returned with two plates of food, twice as much as Root could possibly eat heaped on the plate. This was food for a lumberjack, Root thought to herself. And she loved it. Root jumped up and went to one of the cabinets over the sink. She pulled down a smaller plate, and then went back to her seat next to Rosa. She spooned some of each of the mounds onto her small plate, looking up at Rosa with a smile.

"Too much," she said in Spanish, and Rosa laughed. Root took a portion of mashed cooked plantain, with the yummy topping of red onion rings, cooked lightly in oil and vinegar. Then there was salami, cut thick in rounds and browned, fried eggs, sunny-side up like she liked them, and rectangles of cheese slices, fried and browned on each side. This is a heart-attack-on-a-plate, Root thought, and dug in. And, as if there wasn't already enough fat in this dish, Maia came back, apologizing, with a plate of avocado slices she'd forgotten to put on their table. Heaven, Root thought, and she smiled again at Rosa, who looked so happy to see her eat.

There was noise from the dining room, and Root could tell they were watching soccer on the television. Soon, the men would be yelling, leaping up and crowing with each goal scored by their team, and miserable if the other team won.

After a little while, Rosa leaned in to speak more softly to Root.

"Your friend should stay here tonight. She needs to rest," she said in Spanish.

"Thank you, Rosa, for helping us. You and your family are so kind – " She hoped she'd said the right word in Spanish. Rosa seemed to know what she meant, even if the words weren't perfect. Root went on to say that they were chased by some men, and her friend – Abbey, Root called her – was injured. Rosa looked down, stabbing some of her food with a fork and raising it up.

"Your work?" she asked.

"_Si_," Root said. Yes, this was something about her work. Rosa knew some things about her, and the fact that her work put her in dangerous situations. But Root had helped the family, when things had been bad once before, and no one else could have done what she had done for them.

"What are you going to do now?" Rosa asked.

Root told her that she was going to move the van to a place further away, and leave it, so no one would know where they were, and once – Abbey – could travel, they would leave. There was another safe place that they could go to, where friends would come to help. Rosa nodded.

They ate in silence for a little while, and Root could see Rosa thinking. She told Root that she would have one of her sons take the van and drive it away. Root started to protest.

"I don't want any trouble for your family," she said. Rosa shook her hands in the air.

"No trouble." They could hide the van in a shed nearby, and then later today, drive it wherever Root wanted it to go. Root thought for a moment. The blood. There was blood all over the seat, from Sameen. She needed to clean it, before they abandoned the van. Otherwise, when the police found it, they wouldn't buy the joy ride theory and the van would make the 6 o'clock news. She told Rosa that she had something to do with the van first, and she sped through the rest of her breakfast.

Rosa followed her out to the plaza after breakfast, and Root showed her the blood on the seat. Good thing that it was plastic, and not fabric. It could come off with a little scrubbing. Root asked for two or three bottles of beer, if Rosa had any in the house. She laughed out loud. With all these men?

She came back a few minutes later with bottles of beer, and some old cloth towels. Root poured the beer from one of the bottles on the seat, where the blood had pooled, and let it sit for a little while. She poured more into the towel, and used it to wipe down the seat-back, where Sameen's bloody jacket had pressed back against it. The beer took it right off, and left the desired smell on the plastic, like kids had sloshed beer around, partying in the van after they stole it off the street.

They could smell the produce in the back, too. The van was carrying a delivery of fruit and other produce to the Korean fruit market when Root had spied it from the alley. Maybe they'd make a bit of a mess of that, too, like kids would do if they'd taken the van on a joy ride through town. No real harm done. Just a stupid-guy-trick thing that happened all the time in a big City.

Root wiped at the blood pool on the seat, and most of it came off on the first try. A little more, and that should do it. The van was ready for action. Root walked around the back, and opened the door. She hoisted herself up and then started tossing the boxes, neatly stacked, all over the floor of the van. Rosa watched her do it.

Root tried to say, in Spanish, what she was doing, but she wasn't sure that Rosa understood. When the boxes were scattered, like the van had been veering all over, tipping the stacks, and bumping over rough road, and into pot-holes, Root slapped her hands together.

"Finished," she said, looking over at Rosa, who was wiping off the seat. She looked at the plastic. It didn't look right. Too clean where they'd scrubbed it, and now it looked obvious that it had been scrubbed. That would be suspicious.

Rosa looked around her and then saw the terracotta pots near the back door. She limped over to one, and reached in for a little of the dirt on the top. She poured a few drops of the beer into her hand, to wet the dirt, and then smeared it on the seat, over the clean spots. Then she wiped over the smear with the cloth towel, and – presto ! – the seat looked like any other used seat in a delivery van.

Root smiled at her. She was really good at this. Misspent youth, perhaps, too. She'd have to ask her more about her life. But, for now, the van was ready, and Root could tell Rosa where she thought they could leave it for the police to find.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15: nowhere; under the overpass; incoming wounded; 222;**

* * *

**The 24-hour diner, blocks from Harold, same day**

Harper and the Russian waitress hunkered down next to some old metal ductwork on the roof. After scouting the perimeter, Joey walked back and knelt down next to them.

"NYPD is everywhere down there. They're at the back in the alley, on the side over there on the street, and at the front. We'll just have to wait," he said. He looked for a long moment at the waitress, sitting there in the wind with just a sweater on over her uniform and he slid off his jacket to wrap around her shoulders.

"No," she said, waving her hand at him. "I fine."

"Suit yourself. It's gonna get colder up here." She barely acknowledged and he looked over at Harper, who shifted her eyes to his, nodding.

"What's your name?" she said, offering her hand. "I'm Harper."

"Yana – Ilyana," the woman said, very softly. She didn't make eye contact.

"So, Yana, it must have been pretty crazy when those goons came in," Harper said, watching the woman's reaction. She was blank for a moment and then looked confused.

"Goons?"

"Yeah, the guys with the guns."

"Yes. I scared. Hide in bathroom," she said, looking from one to the other with her arms out to her side.

"How long have you been working there – at the diner?" Joey asked.

"Few months." He noticed she looked edgy. Her eyes shot down to the ground.

"So you know the people then – the ones who were tied up in the store room?" She just nodded without looking up.

"Why didn't you call the police?" She didn't answer.

The other two just waited. Silently. Watching her. Her eyes were still focused on the ground. She started to fidget, to twist the hem of her sweater in her hands.

"I – I – " she started. But she hesitated.

"Go on, Yana," Harper said.

"Don't have papers. They give me work, but no papers to stay." Joey nodded. If Yana was undocumented, that explained why she wouldn't want to be there when the police showed up. But why didn't she run when she had the chance – before he and Harper got there? There was plenty of time for her to leave. And she didn't seem to have much concern or reaction when she saw her co-workers tied up in the store room. And how about her scaling the drainpipe the way she did? Things didn't make sense.

Joey felt his phone buzz in his pocket. On the screen when he swiped it, was a single word: _look_. His eyes went up to Harper's and then he made his way to a spot near the edge of the roof where he could see over. He glanced down at the knot of police cruisers surrounding the diner, and then at the pairs and triplets of officers below them in the parking lot. That's when he spotted Fusco walking in from the back alley of the diner.

He watched him stop to chat with some of the officers, and then glance up toward the roofline. Joey, for a split second, raised himself up where he could see him. Fusco talked on for a little while longer with the men, and then shook himself as though he was cold. He complained and shooed the rest of the officers toward the back of the diner, then inside, where they could all get warm again.

"Any coffee in here? It's cold out there!" Joey heard him say, as the men disappeared inside with Fusco. The door shut behind them, and then a few minutes later, on his cellphone screen: _go now._

Joey turned to the women and motioned for them to follow. He let Harper go down first, waiting on the roof with Yana; and then she stepped around the drainpipe and grabbed on, lowering herself down the wall, walking her hands down the pipe with a strong grip. About halfway down, she stopped for a moment and looked back up to the roof at Joey. He could see it in her eyes before she dropped. She knew what she was doing. No accident.

Yana pushed off from the pipe and dropped down, right on top of Harper, who crashed underneath her to the cement. Yana popped up and stepped back one step, then launched a kick right at Harper. Joey didn't see where it landed. He was already half-way down the pipe, going after her - and Yana took off through the alleyway. He jumped down the rest of the way, and pulled his gun, but held off firing to scare her. Firing would only give them all away, and the cops would come looking. He holstered the gun, and leaned down to check on Harper.

She was just rolling over. Joey gave her a hand up, and then the two of them ducked around the fencing and took off after her. At the corner, they looked both ways for Yana - no sign of her on the street either way. They split up then and walked in opposite directions, peering into the shops that had opened today.

Yana was nowhere.

**Bronx, same day**

"_Aqui_," Root said, pointing to a spot on her cellphone map. It was miles away, near some deserted factory buildings, under an overpass. Rosa's sons nodded. They knew the place. It was a good spot to leave the van.

Rosa had given her some empty soda and beer bottles, and food wrappers from the garbage pail. She had two unopened bottles of beer left, and she had some bags of snacks she'd opened on the dash of the van, where the contents would bump around and drop all over the floor as she drove.

By the time she was done with it, the van would be properly trashed, like a party van. She'd slosh beer all over the inside, and leave the empties and wrappers. The music would be blaring out of the radio. It wouldn't be long before the cops found it, abandoned under the overpass. Kids.

Root gave Rosa a hug, and jumped into the van. Her sons waited a little while before they left and then followed by a different path; but they'd end up nearby, where they could pick up Root leaving the site.

**Harold's office, same day**

"I've got her. The waitress," Logan said, softly, looking back to Harold at his computer.

"Don't lose her, then," Harold said. He was watching his Team at the diner, Miss Rose and Mr. Durbin untangling themselves from a problem at the back of the diner, then racing after the waitress.

They'd sent in Detective Fusco, when they'd seen the trio climb up to the roof of the diner to escape the NYPD. Detective Fusco had rolled in, ostensibly to coordinate the NYPD response to this break-in at the diner.

Harold had sent him, instead, to draw the officers away and allow Miss Rose and Mr. Durbin to leave with the waitress. There was no audio inside the diner, so Logan and Harold could only watch and infer from the video. The Team had found her inside the diner, and kept her with them as though her status was uncertain. Not a prisoner, but not an innocent, either.

So, when she ran for it, down the same alley as Miss Shaw and Miss Groves, Logan had followed her on his feed, while Harold kept the Team in view.

"No. Not there!" Logan said, shaking his head.

"What's wrong, Mr. Pierce?" Harold looked up at him, concerned.

"She's heading right into the same block where the shooters went. Do we send our Team after her?"

"No. We don't have enough people on the ground. We'd need a full Team for backup," Harold said.

Logan agreed. They didn't know where the men chasing Root and Shaw had gone. Too risky to send in Joey and Harper, alone.

"Where's Reese, by the way? I haven't seen him."

"Returning from a task. Let's think this through, Mr. Pierce," Harold said.

"Miss Groves stole a van, and brought Miss Shaw, who is injured, to a location in the Bronx. She's far from any of us, and far from the safe-houses. She's tried to block communications with us, presumably because she is worried about being discovered." Logan nodded at each point. Then he spoke up.

"Shaw's wounded, and she needs attention. They're gonna have to go to the safe-house. Which one is the one with all the medical gear?"

"222," Harold said. And that gave him an idea. He pulled his cellphone out and sent the message to Mr. Reese: _32s_. That would alert him he should make his way to the safe-house, and be prepared for incoming wounded.

"I'm sending Mr. Reese there. It's highly likely Miss Groves and Miss Shaw will make their way there."

**Westchester, same day**

Reese was down as far south as lower Westchester, but still north of the City. His cellphone buzzed on the seat, and he tapped the screen:_ 32s_.

Three two's. Harold was sending him the apartment number, 222, for one of their safe-houses, the one with all the medical equipment that Shaw had set up. Someone was hurt, then, Reese said to himself. They only used that one when one of the Team was hurt. He'd re-direct there, then – instead of going to the office where Harold was.

He thought about Shaw. Ex-ER doc, ex-NSA black ops specialist. And how many times had she scraped him up off the floor from some situation where things had gone sideways? And not only him. She'd had her hands on all of them at one time or another, stitching them up, digging out shrapnel, and bullets, setting broken bones. Whatever it took, and sometimes it took a lot. That's why she'd set up that safe-house: 222. He'd lost count, now, how many times she'd saved his life. Only once – so far – had he been able to pay her back a little bit.

Down in the basement of the hair salon in Queens. They were prisoners, run off the road, and pulled from their car by the Zheng. They woke up in the basement, Shaw tied face down on a table, and him hanging by his wrists from the ceiling. The Zheng had doused them with cold water, and he remembered Shaw turning her head to face him, glass from the windshield falling from her hair, and then seeing him hanging there.

She'd made some kind of comment, and one of the Zheng pulled out a wood baton, solid and hard, to smack her across the legs. But instead of stopping her, it just made her spout off more, and they hit her again, harder. She seemed to be ready to take them all on herself, but then someone behind them was speaking Mandarin to the thugs, and the Zheng came for him, instead. They broke his leg with the baton.

And then they went back after Shaw. He'd heard the voice speaking Mandarin again from behind them, and then he saw the look in the eyes of one of the Zheng. He started to pull her backwards down the table, toward him. He was smiling, looking up at him hanging there – barely conscious – doused again with cold water after they broke his leg. He knew what was going to happen next to Shaw.

He used his long frame, and swung backwards on the rope, the fibers tearing the skin of his wrists. He kept his focus on them so he wouldn't think about the rest; on the swing forward, he lunged out with his broken leg straight into that smiling face. One of the last things he remembered was seeing the fat man crumple in a heap on the floor.

When he woke up again, they were alone. Shaw was on the floor, next to him. He remembered finding her there, and covering her with his jacket. They were both wrecked, beaten with the wood batons; and for Shaw, worse.

Fusco found them. He'd called 9-1-1, against orders from Reese. And then he'd stayed outside their rooms at the hospital that night. Before morning, though, Shaw had slipped the two of them out, and they'd made it together to the safe-house – 222.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16: or something brute force; as he waited for wounded; she was aware**

* * *

**Bronx, same day, late December, 2016**

As Root returned to Rosa's apartment, hidden in the back seat of their car with two of Rosa's sons up front, she'd said little to them. And they hadn't asked any questions of her, either. Better that they knew as little as possible about this situation with Root and Sameen.

Rosa was there waiting for them in the kitchen. With solemn eyes, she'd watched them enter and file past her – until she was sure everyone had arrived intact; then she'd nodded to her sons. Most of the family had already retreated to their own apartments in the building, but a few of the men remained, watching soccer together in the front room. And two of the younger women were busy washing dishes and stirring pots on the stove for the evening meal. Rosa invited her to sit for a bit, and Root knew they would all be listening for any scraps of conversation from the kitchen.

The two women faced one another over the small table in the kitchen, Rosa pouring out strong coffee for herself and a cup of tea for Root. She listened as Root described how she'd left the stolen van in a dark spot, overgrown with weeds and bushes below an overpass. It gave Root a chill to recall some of the details.

When she'd finished trashing the van, Root left it behind, doors wide open, and music blaring, without a look back. She'd walked out to the main road along a dark, muddy path littered with broken bottles and junk. She didn't tell Rosa about that part, or that she'd come across two old black men in a clearing, warming themselves by a fire in a rusty old drum. They'd looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes, hoisting a brown bag to their lips in the cold. Others had had the same idea through the years – hanging around that lonely place to drink.

She'd made her way past them and through vines and bare-branched trees on the other side of the clearing, to the road. It was a short hike then, in the fading light, to where she found Rosa's sons waiting a few blocks away. Root jumped in behind them in the car and stayed low while they drove a winding path back to the apartment. No one followed. Root was sure of it.

When she finished her story, she stopped and looked at Rosa. In Spanish, she thanked her again for helping the two of them, and then Root excused herself to check on Sameen. As she walked the hall back to the small bedroom she could feel eyes on her as Rosa's family watched. Root made a mental note to tell Sameen her name here would be Abbey. The less Rosa and her family knew about their real identities the better.

Root stopped in front of the door, and pushed it open, softly. Sameen was sitting up on the side of the bed, grimacing, when Root looked in. She'd dressed in the clothing Rosa's daughter had left for her after they'd peeled the bloody ones off her and washed her down.

Sameen looked awful, Root thought – she was pale and hunched over, holding her left arm close to her body. Root noticed the swathe was gone – she must have pulled it off to get dressed, but she'd need Root's help getting it back on. She shot a hopeful smile to Sameen. In her softest voice:

"You're awake. Just got back from dumping the van; got here as fast as I could." Root crossed the floor and sat down next to her on the bed, reaching around her shoulders with her arm.

"How're you doing, sweetie?" There was a long silence, then Sameen looked directly in her eyes.

"We need to get out of here, Root."

Root shook her head, no. "I think we should stay the night, Sameen. You look awful. You shouldn't be traveling like this." Sameen looked down, and Root heard her sigh. She reached for the swathe and helped Sameen slide it over the top of her left arm, over her body, and underneath her right arm. When she tightened it around her, Sameen grimaced again, reaching for her left shoulder.

"I wish I could get you something for pain, Sameen. Then you could sleep tonight."

Sameen didn't answer. Maybe she was just tired, Root thought, but maybe there was something else. She knew Sameen, and when she wasn't talking, that usually meant trouble. It meant she was getting ready to do something – something unexpected or something brute force.

**Apartment 222, Manhattan, same day, late December, 2016**

There was a parking garage around the corner, and he'd left the car there. It was a short, cold walk in fitful wind and driving snow to get to the building with the safe-house. Second floor, dim hallway, thick carpet erasing the sound of his footsteps; he lifted the brass plaque at the door and leaned over to present his eye to the scanner — their latest addition instead of a key in the lock. Instantly, he heard the latch click and reached for the door. It was pitch black inside the apartment.

Reese stepped in and closed it quickly behind him, then stood in the darkness for his usual ritual.

His pulse thumped a bit harder, and his breath strained to come a bit faster as he stood there sensing the surroundings. Each place he'd ever frequented, each Afghani cave, each Colorado woods, each room or apartment he'd ever called home – each had its own signature in his memory. Carried in the air, he knew the smells, the tiny inputs of light and darkness, temperature, humidity, even the feel of the air currents themselves as they layered out on his skin – a stored memory of the place, undisturbed.

But if things weren't right, even before the hair would stiffen at the back of his neck, he would move away, crouch, slide his weapon to his hand. Like any predator faced with prey, his senses would narrow to the sharpest few. It was all about silence then, and cunning, surprise and capture, with the least struggle and clash. In his world, a silent quick kill was the best.

He found himself exhaling. The air here checked out. Some fruit smells, and something faint like old coffee grounds. Deep darkness from the heavy drapes. Layer on layer of dry, cool air. No one had been here for weeks.

He lifted the light switch on the wall and the lamp lit up dimly next to the couch. Something about the way the light was dim like that – a flash of memory came to him, of that night with Shaw and him:

**Manhattan, November, 2014**

_Reese was sitting back on the couch, resting against a stack of pillows, with his body stretched out, and the right knee up on a layer of folded blankets. He'd showered first when the two of them got there – doctor's orders – and then he'd pulled out clothes from the supply they all kept there in the safe-house. Sweatpants were the only thing he could fit over the swollen knee right now, and Shaw had even cut across the fabric with scissors, leaving the right pant leg short, above his knee. _

_It was throbbing hard, sharp and deep inside the knee, like a toothache he couldn't escape, and she had given him something from her drug stash for pain. He could feel it kicking in as he was resting there, while Shaw was taking her turn, cleaning up. _

_Just like him, she would stand there, with the water falling like hot rain on blood caked in her hair, loosening the bits of glass that would fall and sparkle in the drain. Water stained red with her own blood would flow in little rivers down her skin, across her feet, across the tile in a final swirl, to disappear at the silver drain. And after the water had done all it could do, she would step out, gingerly, on feet battered by the wood baton, to stand naked at the mirror. _

_With her doctor's eye she would survey all the damage, as if it were not hers. And her disorder, that thing that made her so good at what she did – decisive, unemotional, remorseless – her disorder would be her friend tonight. No tears for her wounds, no pity for her handling, so little pain for all this suffering flesh. But, the body kept the score. And there would come a reckoning. For sure. _

_She would dress in sweats, too. In sweats neither would have to see the baton marks everywhere, or the bruises from wrenching around inside the SUV, rolling down the bank. They could look almost normal to themselves, in sweats. The next few days were going to be rough, for both of them. Reese had been there and done that before, and so had Shaw. But that wouldn't make it any easier for them this time._

_Leaning back against the pillows, Reese reached over for the drink he'd poured for himself – against doctor's orders. Don't mix pain meds and alcohol. Good advice. But he wasn't taking it..._

He walked through the apartment then, checking each room, until he was satisfied. On the way back from the hallway with all the bedrooms and the shower, he stopped in the kitchen. On the counter, a bowl of dying fruit, almost unrecognizable now, left there weeks ago. He'd have to talk with his crew. Police the place better before you leave.

He lifted the bowl to throw the rotting fruit away, and a small cloud of fruit flies lifted in the air. He walked the bowl to the trash, and slid the mess down inside, with most of the fruit flies, too. Then he walked the bowl back to the sink. Some hot water and a squeeze of dish soap made quick work of the slime. While he wiped the water from the bowl, he stepped to the refrigerator next, bracing for what might lie inside. He popped the door, and bright white light glared out. Nearly empty but for a pitcher of water.

Reese puttered in the kitchen, wiping down counters, stacking dishes, rinsing and starting a fresh pot of coffee. He was getting the start of a headache now, and the cure was the black elixir dripping down inside the glass carafe. Hot food would have to wait. There was little here to make. As soon as he'd had some coffee, he'd head out for food to stock the apartment.

Once people started arriving, there might not be time to do it then, and he wanted to be prepared for incoming wounded. Harold's cryptic text, _32s_, had sent him here to this apartment, 222, where they went when someone on the team needed medical. He wondered which one of them it would be, and how bad. This place had seen its share of wounded.

Reese quickened his pace. They could be here at any time, and he wasn't ready. He gulped down a coffee, and then headed back out, slipping the trash from the kitchen into the metal chute in the hallway. He left lights on so they'd know he'd been there, and ran down the stairs to the front. The snow had stopped; just a quick dusting, but the wind was still sharp and bitter. He headed into it, pulling his collar high around his neck and face. In the next block was a deli where he could get provisions, at least enough to get them started.

He kept watch as he walked, for the telltale signs that someone had taken notice, or was following. Even in the deli, when he turned into the crowded store, he kept watch – that ever-present pressure to stay aware, to know the layout: exits, dead ends, places to duck in, where to stand that could stop a bullet. He caught sight of himself in the glass case as he ordered meats and cheese. Pale, with the dark stubble of beard against the pasty skin. Dark circles under his eyes. He looked like some old guy, used up. That's what days without sleep, without food, and just one cup of coffee did to you. He wasn't getting any younger. And the cold always made things worse. It made all the past catch up with him – all the hurts and the hits. He felt like that old guy looking back at him in the glass.

He needed food, something hot. That would set things straight. While the kid behind the counter bagged his groceries, Reese downed a cup of hot soup from his order. The kid nodded to him.

"Chu look hungry," he said, with an accent. Something Spanish, Reese thought, Central or South American.

"_Es bueno_," Reese said, holding the blue and white paper cup in the air. The kid smiled back at Reese, who placed some twenties on the counter, and waited for change. He grabbed the bags, and the change, and turned for the door.

The plastic rustled in the wind, and he felt the cold at his back. It was good to get inside again, and this time he rode the elevator up to the second floor. In the kitchen, he emptied the bags and reset the place, so he was ready. He fixed a sandwich for himself, and poured more soup from the cartons he'd carried back, and then he settled on the couch in the living room. Caraway and rye, ham and swiss cheese with a smear of mustard, sharp with the taste of horseradish. And the soup had a rich tomato broth, just what he needed to recharge his batteries. He lingered over every bite, savoring, pacing himself in the face of acute hunger. He had learned this through all his years of training, to pace himself.

Later, when he was warm again, and his hunger and thirst were slated, he rose and brought his dishes to the sink, washed and dried them, then stacked them in the cabinet. The counter was clean and sparse, and in the bowl, fresh fruit from the deli. In the urn, hot coffee. In the refrigerator, fresh deli, milk, eggs, and bread. With this, he could get them started.

He lowered all the lights and went to the living room again, to the cabinet at the side, where the liquor was stored. In a heavy-bottomed glass, he splashed his favorite whiskey, and raised the glass to his nose. He breathed in the aroma from the glass. This glass would keep him company tonight. As he waited for wounded.

**Upstate New York, same day**

She had napped for a little while after Reese had gone, but not too long. She wanted to sleep tonight on the plane to Italy. When she woke from her nap there were things to do to close down the house, a familiar routine after years of six- and nine-month missions. She could make her house ready in less than three hours. The main thing was to keep the pipes from freezing in the dead of winter. She had an electric baseboard that ran in the rooms with any pipes, but if the electric went down, the pipes could freeze and burst, flooding her house until someone noticed water gushing from her front door. It was worth the time to drain the pipes.

She swept the ash from the fireplace, and put the bucket in the garden for Spring. And while she was outdoors, she walked down to her school, checking that the doors were fastened from the wind and snow.

She'd showered and dressed early in the day in comfortable clothes for her flight, with extra layers folded in her carry-on. It seems that her flights were often cold at night, and she needed more than the thin blanket they gave out to passengers. At this time of year, lines would be long, and flights loaded with passengers for the holidays. Not her favorite way to fly, but this offer had come up suddenly, from her team in France.

She was going to set up a crisis center for refugees. These were arriving out of West Africa, Sudan, Nigeria, and Syria. She'd seen the footage of overcrowded boats, and the bodies on the beach, all the horror of those who'd never made it. She'd be helping to open more sites, with beds and food, and medical care for those who had. They brought stories of war, torture, famine, disease, and death all around them. You could see it in their eyes. Especially the children. That hollow look, empty, when even crying took too much effort.

Jules had seen it all before. And now, she was wading in again. For six months, maybe more. Six months of long grueling days, short nights, often interrupted. And when she was done, she would return back here to her house by the lake. To recover for the next time.

It was nearly time to go. She threw a heavy shawl around her shoulders, and stepped into tall rubber boots, walking through the french doors to the back. She went to the right this time, over grass and then into woods, crunching through downed leaves, and holding onto tree trunks where the footing was steep. At the bottom, the air was still and cold, and the surface of the lake was as smooth as glass. Purple and pink sky reflected in the lake as day gave way to night.

Jules had always found that this time of day was powerful for her; at dusk, time suspended for a bit, and night air came in to take the place of day. It was a time, she had found, when those whose souls had crossed over, could return and make their presence known to those left here.

In the shadows just forming, or in the dim light in her hallway, on the porch chairs or on the back deck; sometimes she could sense them there, especially in summer. Drinking in the beauty of green grass all around them, or soft summer breezes, sudden showers, thunder, lightning. She could see them from the corner of her eye - rocking, looking out to the trees, standing on the beach with the waves lapping near.

So many souls circled – she was aware and at peace with them.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17: Predator. Prey nearby.**

* * *

**Late December, 2016**

**Please note****: In ****the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1 there are suggested music pieces to accompany this and other Chapters to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them...**

If it hadn't been for the moonlight, he wouldn't have seen them coming. Maybe it was that special sense he had, the one that never rested, the one that stayed awake even when he didn't. He'd opened his eyes at just the right time; saw them up ahead — light from the moon on them. They thought they were hidden in shadows, but Reese could see them moving against the blackness of woods behind them.

He rose, and in the darkness followed.

It wasn't long before Reese saw them stop then to look back toward her house.

Three of them. He could see the one point to the french doors and point again to one side, where the pump house stood. They separated then; two moved off and divided again, heading on different paths for the house. The third one held back, and Reese went for him first.

He traveled in the treeline, silently, watching — testing with his feet for sticks that could snap beneath his weight. A thick layer of old downed leaves and pine needles cushioned his steps and Reese closed in, in silence.

Moonlight bathed the intruder. Stark white light, harsh against a black knit cap, black jacket and dark pants. Only hands and a bit of his face showed. Not enough to recognize him. On the ground ahead a thick stout branch stuck up from the leaves. Reese was drawn to it as a weapon and in a few more steps he was on it. This would need to be quick – lifting it and swinging it straight for the intruder's head. He readied himself.

In one motion Reese pulled at the branch and stepped forward. Leaves rustled and the intruder began to turn. In the next second he'd be down, silently, from the hit.

Reese swung the branch forward. In the same moment moonlight lit the turning face.

It seemed to take forever for his arm to get there.

Moonlight flooded the two of them. But instead of surprise in his eyes, Reese saw him smile, cold blue eyes crinkling in the light. Greer!

His heart grabbed in his chest. They knew he was there. Mid-swing, Reese dropped to the ground and something hard glanced off him from behind. He rolled forward, taking Greer's legs out from under him. Greer tumbled, hitting hard as Reese rolled up to his feet.

Footsteps pounded at him from the trees. In the darkness all he could see were their poles — long shiny wooden poles clutched in their hands. They wore black, everything black. Even their eyes were shielded. Zheng, bodyguards for Greer.

So close now, but Reese took off at them, eyes on Greer, just rising from the ground. He swung the branch back as far as it could go. It came forward like a hammer in his hand aimed for the back of Greer's head — he'd go down and stay down this time — one chance to end him.

A flash of yellow from out of the darkness. And the sound of wood snapping across his forearm just before the strike. Stinging shock pain there; the arm went numb. It recoiled — wave after wave of electric shock; stinging pain shooting down his arm, so sharp, it bent him double. He cradled the arm with his other hand and pulled it in against him.

His hand had no strength. The branch dropped from his open grip. He watched it fall, slow motion, to the ground.

Reese knew all about that strike point on his arm — from training days back in the Rangers. In hwarangdo, a strike there neutralized the arm for hours. Nothing he could do for it now. He backed away then, turning, heading to his left on the run.

Too late — the Zheng were already on him. Swarming, their poles landing, slapping at him; on his back, on his legs, across the shoulders. He nearly went down in that first barrage.

Their footsteps thudded behind him. He knew their reach was longer with the poles. He cut to the right then, for the treeline. At least the low-hanging branches would keep them from swinging; all they could do was jab with the poles. He ducked through clumps of saplings, spreading his arms, bending them downward as he ran. It cost him dearly on the right; but he could hear their green trunks flinging backwards when he let them fly, slapping at the Zheng closing in behind.

He heard them stumble and trip then, snarling together in knots. Long seconds passed before footsteps started again, but Reese was ahead now, running along the treeline for the hill to the school. Once he was there, he would even the odds.

Trees were heavier on the hill. No way they could swing the poles in here. He moved as fast as he could go, but the slope was steep, and the footing slippery. He slipped and slid his way down, until there ahead was the one-story school. Reese unwound the rope from the pulls and yanked at the doors. Inside, he went straight for the wall of weapons. Some were dull, for practice, but some Reese could use to kill.

His right hand was useless to grip. His left would have to do.

* * *

From the wall he grabbed for a long pole and a practice machete, turning back, swinging with his left hand on the run. The first one came running through, pole forward to block. Reese side-stepped the yellow pole and speared him in the chest with his. He didn't wait but swung at the sound, again and again in the darkness; hitting wood, hitting flesh. Impossible to see what in the darkness. A pole clattered to the floor and rolled. Another strike and Reese could hear the crunch, the blast of sudden breath, as a form in black slid to the floor at his legs. He heard it gasping then, helpless for a moment, struggling to stand. He had to finish it.

Reese stepped back, swung high with his pole. With the right arm he could push, even if he couldn't grasp. Double-handed, he aimed for the struggle and swung down as hard as he could manage. A crushing blow through his hands; shooting pain up his arm; rustling, and then silence.

Eery silence. He couldn't see anything in front of him. Reese held his pole at the ready — more silence, except for his own stifled breath. He waited another moment, unsure in the darkness if it was over. Then Reese looked to the opening where the air blew in.

More would be coming; this one blocked the way. At least the body would slow them down coming through. His heart pounded in his ears, and his breathing came fast and sharp now in his chest. He flattened on the wall at the doorway, listening for the rest of them coming. There were sounds outside. At least two more.

The school was dark, but he knew its layout. There was a wall over there that separated the open space. He remembered it was made of wooden slats. If he could get to the other side, he could ambush anyone who came near.

Reese stepped softly, but as quickly as he could in the darkness. In his left hand he carried the long pole, and in his belt on the right he'd wedged the machete. Reese didn't even try the right hand; he couldn't feel it. But the arm above it throbbed and spasmed when he moved it; he pushed it from his thoughts — to concentrate on the number of steps to the wall.

Eight – nine – ten. There it was. Smoothness of the wood touched his hand. He stepped around the pillar at the end, then back along the slats, hugging up against them. About half-way in Reese stopped. He let the long pole lean against the wall where he could reach it. And then he took the machete into his good left hand. With the right one he ran the back of his wrist down the slats, feeling for an opening at the right height. The slats angled upward and away. If he picked one low enough, and laid his blade flat on the slat, it would guide his thrust high and deep.

Reese heard something, and held his breath. That feeling came over him.

Predator. Prey nearby.

Senses sharpened. Vision, even in the darkness. Hearing. He heard breathing at the front door, and soft footsteps on the other side of the wall. He didn't move, didn't breathe. Soon he could feel tiny waves of heat through the slats. Prey was close now, sliding along the slats in the blackness. Reese took one silent breath. He felt heat at his face from the other side. He didn't wait any longer.

In one motion Reese slid and lifted his blade — arms braced on his body, pushing up with the strength of his legs. He felt the dull blade meet resistance and punch through. He heard the sharp groan on the other side, felt the wobble of his blade in his hands as the body thrashed to come off. But Reese held tight — until the thrashing turned to dead weight on the blade.

Then he reached for his pole. The next one was already here.

Instead of retreating to the back, he crouched low where he was. The pole he held tip-upward to jab at the next one. If he could catch him in the throat, it would stop him in his tracks.

Reese held his breath again and listened. He heard cloth straining down low near the floor. Reese coiled and threw himself backward; a pole smashed the pillar where he was.

Whirling. He heard whirling next and foot motion, smashing sounds coming close, everything tumbling and crashing as this next one swung at ankle level. Reese backed up fast; the sounds tracked him, whirling and smashing in the darkness. The pole flung a low table at his right. Incense and brass skidded; a glass vase launched and shattered on the floor.

Reese knew the back wall was close now, and he sensed where his target must be. He reached with his left hand, out to a tree trunk hanging from its frame. The Wooden Man, hanging on its frame from the back wall. The Wooden Man would stop a swinging pole and more.

Glass crunched, and then a pole slashed at him, just out of reach. If it connected, it would knock Reese off his feet. It started whirling then, gaining speed. Glass crunched close by.

Reese felt the canvas cover on the Wooden Man, and slid in behind it, shielding himself from the whirling pole. The angle changed then, swinging high to low, then high overhead, and slashing down across his body steps away. It hummed in the air as it went by, so fast and so close Reese could feel the air move. On the next swing, the whirling pole would hit the Wooden Man. He had to be ready to strike.

He heard the hum and felt the air jump off the pole. Then the sharp smack as it hit the Wooden Man; Reese uncovered at that moment and swung backhanded with his pole. It bounced on something softer than wood, and Reese scrambled to go for that spot. The hit with his pole told him where and he lunged out, tackling blackness with his shoulder. They slammed together to the floor, grunting, and Reese wrestled to the top. The dark form coiled underneath him, arms pinned by his legs. Reese punched it with his left fist. Then again, and again, but that didn't stop it.

The form launched him upwards from the middle, but he held on and pummeled again with his fist. Reese felt it flex then and it caught his left arm with both legs, scissoring and wrenching it backwards in a pin. Reese fought to lean forward, fighting the pin, on the verge of popping his shoulder out. He pressed down hard against its arms to hold them pinned under his knees.

Reese strained forward, inching against the pressure. He could feel his shoulder starting to give. Reese slid his numb right arm across the form where its neck should be. In one last forward push, he bent the arm and dropped all his weight down through the point of his elbow. He could feel a sharp crack at the throat underneath.

There was thrashing then, beneath him — and the lock on his shoulder released. He felt it snap back in and Reese pushed harder then, down through his arm at the neck. A sound came from its throat — like something stuck inside, using up the space to breathe. It struggled beneath him, clawing at him, punching him in the back with its legs; desperate, as the sounds of its breathing choked off. Reese took the pounding, pressing down on its throat with all his strength.

Stridor, then, from the form; and, finally, no sounds of breathing at all. Its flailing ceased, no air left for the clawing and punching. Still, Reese didn't let up.

Not until the form fell limp beneath him and the sound of death — a rattle — rose from it. Reese could feel its vibration in his arm.

Done now. It was done.

Reese looked up toward the door. More could be coming. He held his breath.

Air from the front door tousled his hair. He could hear only silence. He could feel no other living thing.

Reese was alone now in the school.

He lifted himself and rolled to his left on the floor. He pulled his top leg back off the body, and shoved it down off his left leg, pinned underneath it. Then Reese rolled onto his back, breathing hard. He wouldn't listen to his body, not yet. Pain was going to light up everywhere, from his right arm, from the clawing and all the pounding body blows he took. He couldn't stop yet to pay attention. More could be coming and Reese couldn't stay there for long.

Up. He needed to get up — had to find the rest of them, wherever they were.

One had headed off toward the pump house, and one had headed for the back of her house. They could be anywhere by now. And where was Greer? And where were the rest of the Zheng? And what about Jules. Where was she?

* * *

In the dim light of the lamp next to the couch, Reese's body stretched full-length, eyes closed, but his face uneasy. Muscle jumps shook him and a low sound came from his throat. He needed to find her.

At his thigh, the heavy-bottomed glass sat curled in his hand. It was empty now, and Reese was alone in the living room.

So quiet in this place for the moment. But, not so in his thoughts.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18: expecting him; eyes of the doe**

* * *

**Manhattan, Sunday, end of December, 2016**

**Please note****: In ****the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1 there are suggested music pieces to accompany this and other Chapters to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them...**

As he approached the house Reese could see smoke rising from the chimney, and he smelled pine and hardwood – oak – in the smoke drifting down from the roof. For a little bit it took him back, back to his home in the mountains. That same smell would hang in the air above his grandfather's cabin and for the moment he was back there walking in from the woods. In one hand was a thin rod, and in the other a line of fish dangling down; a good day of fishing at his favorite stream. It made him smile inside to remember the crunch of gravel under his feet and the smell of smoke in the air. No better memories than growing up in the mountains where days were long, and life felt pure and simple. Woodsmoke welcomed him again as he walked in, but instead of gravel on the old rutted road up at the cabin, green lawn spread out under his feet.

Reese looked up to see Jules waiting for him at her front door. It warmed him inside to see her there – she always knew, somehow she always knew when he was on his way. She'd meet him like this at her doorway, that look in her eyes, expecting him. Inside him, in a place he hadn't even known was there, something clicked. It felt good to be expected.

It felt like he could walk inside her door, and more would be waiting, smiling up at him with her same smile. They were all expecting him. Something deep and warm spread through him. He'd never really thought about it like that, and he'd closed his eyes for a moment to let it sink in.

And when he'd opened them again, he could see she'd noticed. She was good at that, noticing the small things. Like so much about her, he couldn't explain how she did what she did. In her hands he felt like she could shine a light into every corner of him. But it didn't make him want to hide. There was something about her, something that made it safe for him – to be that visible. And instead of turning the other way, escaping like he'd always done before, he'd kept coming back for more.

Then he was there at her door; she was wrapping her arms around him in a welcoming hug, and he was leaning down, pressing his lips to the top of her head. She'd slipped her arm around his coat and led him inside. Right away there was the smell of pine and oak again from the fireplace. And as he breathed it in, Reese couldn't help that memory of home again, so strong that night, coming back.

She'd walked ahead down the hallway, asking something – but he hadn't heard. His thoughts had gone back to her face at the door, expecting him like that. It made him think again of going home, back to the mountains and his own people – walking up the snowy path with the wind quiet and snow falling already, high in the mountains. Yellow light would glow from the windows, and he could see them gathered around a fire inside. When the door swung open he'd see their faces, smiling, expecting him; he could feel their arms around him. He could feel it like a heat rising in his chest. Home. Home from all his travels. He was home, at last.

In the next breath, though, it all went cold inside. And there was a pain there like a stabbing: that scene would never happen.

There was no home for him there – just a run-down wreck in the mountains, abandoned for decades. He never went there anymore. And his people – all gone now. No one left there who even knew his name. Father and grandfather long gone after all these years away. He remembered standing there, at attention, saluting as each was lowered in the ground. He'd never returned to their graves. No peace could come of it. What was done was done. On this cold, clear night, with the stars shining like bits of diamond in the sky, Reese had had his own moment of clarity.

He was alone.

It had stopped him in his tracks right there in her hallway and before he could stop it, a sound had come up from inside, a sound she'd heard. He could see it in her eyes when she turned around – she knew – and he remembered her coming back for him, pulling him down the hall, past her kitchen and down to the room where her table was. Her eyes were on him, shining that light inside him like a spotlight. And he'd let her. He hadn't realized it yet, but he was done hiding himself from every living thing on the planet. He needed to trust someone.

There was something about that room where she'd taken him. So quiet inside. When you crossed the threshold, all the sound disappeared, like back in the deep woods when he was a boy. The carpet of leaves and deep green moss, it swallowed the sounds just like this. The darkness and the high lofted ceiling made it feel airy – like he was high up in a mountain glade. He could breathe up there. Reese tried to will himself to be there, high in the mountains where he could smell the pines and feel the mountain mists again.

So long ago. So far from here.

He felt a sharpness in his chest just thinking of it. That one place on earth where he could go to remember who he was. The sharpness pierced him like shards of glass in his heart. He had to stop.

He didn't want to feel this. He tried to empty himself. If he could just stay empty inside, he wouldn't have to feel anything.

She sat him on the table and pulled off his jacket, and the sweater underneath; then she swung him flat on his back on the table. She got him settled there on the padding and he closed his eyes. Empty. He had to concentrate on empty. That sharp feeling kept coming back if he didn't.

* * *

He could hear her at the cabinet, sliding one of her CD's from its case, and moments after, the music started. He remembered the sounds of water flowing, a paddle swishing and birds calling in the trees. Just like evening time high in the mountains. The paddle dipped in and took the canoe gliding through. He could hear birds calling, and he was sure he could feel the air, smell the pine as if he were really there.

He started to tremble inside. This wasn't what he'd wanted. He didn't want to feel this tonight, how far he'd strayed, how far from home he'd gone. And that it was too late for him now – home wasn't there anymore. There was nothing to return to.

Something wet slid down his face. There was a sound then, and he knew it had come from him – a sound, mournful, then quickly absorbed by the floor and the walls. Her hands were on him, and that touch and the sound of the water flowing all around him, they carried him like the canoe in the river.

There was the flat rock where he used to crawl out and sun himself above the pool. He could hear the water flowing down the rocky ledge, feeding the pool. And peering over the edge of the flat rock, he caught sight of his own reflection, young again, staring down at the water.

There were small sounds of stones and soil sliding down the bank on the other side. And when he looked up, she was there, stepping down the bank in the soft soil, stopping to test the air, her ears flicking and her nose twitching. On either side a young buck, his fur still speckled. The white-tailed doe and her young, were heading for the pool to drink. Reese watched her from his rock; still, so he wouldn't spook her.

She was so small and delicate as she stepped along the bank, nothing like the big bucks he'd brought down hunting with his father. She had those huge brown eyes that stared out around her, watching for danger. Reese watched her nose wrinkle and her ears swivel one more time, until she was satisfied that all was well and stepped to the water's edge. The young bucks crowded her at the edge, anxious to drink, and unaware of any danger. He could see the tiny ripples on the surface as they sipped from the stream.

He remembered all this from his dreams. So often he'd fallen asleep to this one. The doe would look up from the stream, checking for danger, and she would catch sight of him on his rock across the stream. She never ran. She stared at him, sniffing the air, and flicking her ears his way. He held his breath, watching. He didn't want her to leave.

And she would watch him, too, with her soft brown eyes; until she seemed to bow to him, her head lowered in his direction, like a greeting. He always felt that he should do the same, and he was careful to do it slowly, so she didn't startle.

He watched her turn her head to one side, staring into his eyes, as though she had said something and was waiting for his reply. And every night, when he had had this dream, it was the same ending. He didn't know how to understand what she'd said. She'd wait for him, and when nothing happened, she'd backed away with her young, heading up the bank to disappear into the trees.

Leaving him alone again.

**Colorado, November, 2016**

_So late in the season, it was cold in the mountains. Snow had already fallen and covered the grass, the rocky outcroppings. Dry snow had filtered down through the trees onto the carpet of thick leaves beneath the canopy, spongy now below his feet. He could see his breath in the air, and the dampness made the cold air denser, heavier in the woods as he walked._

_Reese was hiking in from the road where he'd pulled off. It was mid-afternoon, overcast, the sky heavily clouded, so that the light lit the sky in a white glow. If he remembered correctly, he'd be able to get into the spot he wanted to see and back again before dark._

_The smell of the trees, pines mostly, and the work of walking through the dense underbrush made him aware of the calm and quiet inside. His thoughts turned to the new memories from his trip to Bellingham. Everything had piled up in his mind, everything so new and strange. He'd barely had time to catch up with the idea that he had a family; living, breathing people who cared about him, liked having him around, wanted to share the loving, messy details of their lives with him and make him a part of it._

_It felt good – and yet terrible – at the same time. He could feel a certain uneasiness with it, an impermanence, as though it could just evaporate at any moment. It felt tenuous, and a part of him didn't want him to count on it, lean on it with his full weight. He knew why. If it should suddenly disappear out from under him now, the feeling would be – Reese didn't let that thought finish. He moved his shoulders up and down to loosen them instead, aware that he'd gone tight there._

_He thought instead about the ceremony for his new nephew, Jake. All the kids were lined up in a circle, with Paula and Matt in the center. Matt had said a prayer out loud in the large room with the vaulted ceiling and the sun beams flooding through tall windows looking out on the North Cascades. They'd presented Jake with a rose, the flower tightly closed, as Matt had said, to signify the potential in Jake to flower as a human – and with all its thorns pulled from its stem, to signify the protection and nurturing he needed in this part of his life._

_Reese remembered the singing and the little speeches welcoming Jake to the greater family of the congregation. He'd kept his eyes on his brother, saw the emotions in his face, the look in his eyes as he drank in the deep feelings from this simple ceremony. Reese just observed; to get through it himself, he'd switched into Protect mode, scanning and observing, rather than feeling everything – like his brother. _

_Reese could see the smiles, observe the genuine feelings of well-wishers packed into seats and standing in the back of the church to watch; and then Reese remembered his surprise as they filed out later on, and he'd learned that Matt was their Pastor. His brother was a man of the church, ministering to the needs of his beloved town at the foot of the mountains. Reese recalled the words carved above the door as they left – "Peace to All Who Enter Here." _

_Nearby, he could see the dedication stone built on Church grounds, acknowledging the Lummi, who had settled this land long before white people had ever come._

_Back home that last evening, he remembered how the little ones had crowded around him like puppies, leaned in against him, comforted by the low vibration of his chest as he read their favorite bedtime stories. He remembered helping Matt carry them, sleeping, up to their bedrooms and tuck them into their beds. He remembered the smell, even now, of their freshly-washed heads resting on his shoulders. And he recalled the quiet time he spent with the three older kids: Katie, Samuel and Jenny. That last evening Katie had pulled out a favorite book and read it to all of them nestled together on the couch. It was a book about the Lummi, about a grandmother patiently teaching a young girl, Tani, the ancient wisdom of her People. The older kids, too, had piled in on him and rested against him as they listened to her soft, strong voice tell the story._

_Later still, he had sat with Jake on his chest, swaddled in a soft striped blanket, asleep after nursing late in the night. Matt and Paula were there, too, speaking softly with him as they lingered in the quiet light of the living room. They'd stayed up late that last night, none of them wanting it to end. But it had. _

_Hard to drive off, hard to leave them, all gathered around his car after a late breakfast of pancakes and bacon the kids had made for him. They'd decorated his pancakes with big smiley faces made from blueberries, and poured cup after cup of strong coffee for him. He was full – filled up with food and drink and something else he could not even name._

_Up ahead was a clearing, a drop-off at the edge of the woods. As he got closer, he could hear water moving, and he recalled the sounds of the stream bending around both sides of the huge boulder sticking up from the stream bed. It was where the stream split, flowing around the rock and then joining again, further down below the deep pool where his favorite flat rock was half-submerged. The water was crystal clear today, and it looked cold. The light was still milky white, and the air was so still now that he'd stopped walking._

_He looked around him. Everything looked a little smaller than he remembered. Then he smiled to himself. He'd been smaller then, too; twelve, when everything had happened here. He looked across the stream toward the bank, where the doe had come down to the water with her two fawns to drink. There was snow on the bank now, covering their tracks if any deer had come down here recently. Reese looked up the bank to the edge of the trees from where she'd always appeared. _

_He waited, his breath showing in the cold, damp air. _

_Nothing was up there at the edge._

_His thoughts turned to that night at Jules' house. It seemed like so long ago. She had met him at the front door, and when he went into her house, he'd been blind-sided with a feeling that had stopped him in his tracks. She'd read him and taken him back to her table; and then she'd played the music that had brought him here to this place from his past. _

_It was so real. The doe, and her fawns. _

_The doe had spoken to him, and he'd understood what she'd tried to tell him so long ago. He'd learned her secret that night – that he was not alone._

_His pulse quickened and there was a feeling rising in his chest as he remembered Harold giving him the news. It started to tumble out in his mind, the phone call, those first hesitant words as he said his name, and then told Matt he was the brother Matt had been searching for. _

_Matt had a family, but Reese was not prepared for what that meant. They had welcomed him into their lives, so trusting, so eager to touch him in so many ways._

_He remembered how the little ones had been drawn to him, laying against him on the big couch in the living room, accepting him. And the older ones, too, leaned into him, pressed against him, filled up with him while he'd been there. _

_And Jake, his special gift. He remembered holding his tiny blanketed body on his chest, listening to his soft breathing, smelling that smell of milk, and baby skin, and soap. What was going on here? How was all this happening to him?_

_Silence. No answers came to him from the trees at the top of the bank. He was thinking about the doe, about her eyes, how unafraid she'd been that time when he'd waded through the stream to the bank. She'd waited for him there, and moved forward toward him, waiting for him to reach out to her. Then she'd come up next to him, touching his face with hers. He'd wanted to understand, all these years. _

_Then, at the top of the bank, he caught sight of something moving slowly at the edge of the woods. He could hear the footsteps in the spongy soil beneath the trees. The sound echoed in the dense air up there among the trees, rolling down to him on the far side of the stream. He strained to see what it was. And then she was there._

_He saw her face and her dark eyes in the shadows at the edge of the woods. She saw him, too. She walked out to the bank, standing high above him, but this time she didn't make a move to come down to the water. _

_Reese looked for her fawns. But she was alone this time. She regarded him with her soft eyes, and a tightness began to form at the base of his throat – he needed to say something to her._

_"I found him. I found my brother," he said to her, and she didn't startle. She stood there, regarding him, and then lowered her head to him, acknowledging._

_"Where are your sons?" Reese called to her. She turned her head to one side, and he saw her look at him like he should know what she was saying. Inside, he did._

_"___Long gone from me, now. Long gone___," she'd said. She watched his reaction with her soft eyes. She began to back into the trees, disappearing from his view, and he called after her._

_"Can't you stay?"_

_"___Goodbye, my son___," and she was gone._

He watched the treeline, certain that she was gone for good. But something more happened. Maybe it was the fading light, or a trick from the shadows. A figure appeared where the doe had just been, tall and slender, with long black hair and the eyes of the doe.

She regarded him with those eyes. And in a little bit, she bowed forward to him, acknowledging.

* * *

Reese could hear a buzzing in his ears, and feel it in his body.

After a little while, he reached for it. His cellphone. He opened his eyes all the way, and swiped the screen.

The name that appeared on his phone: Matt.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19: two guests; Two a second**

* * *

**Bronx, same day**

Rosa clicked off the light in the kitchen. It was late, and only flickering light from the television lit the apartment. She moved through the hallway, and into the living room where two of her grandsons sprawled on the couch. The boys looked up from the show when they heard her click her tongue. In Spanish, she called to them.

"It's time to go to bed, boys." They groaned and started to complain, but she held up her hand.

"We have guests in the house. I want you to go to Marta's tonight. You can stay with the boys." Their faces lit up, and they threw off their blanket and jumped up, wiggling and smiling. The four cousins got along well together. Rosa knew it wouldn't be a hard sell to get them to spend the night over there.

"I'll tell your Mama where you're going," Rosa said to them, and they started to head for the front door.

"Wait, wait. Take your things with you, boys" she called, and they turned back to look at her. "Go get your toothbrushes and your sleeping clothes," she said; and she held her finger to her lips to remind them to be quiet in the hallway. They hustled past her, wiggling and giggling, then into the hallway and in a little while she heard them open the door of their room. A few minutes later they re-appeared, hands full of clothes, a toothbrush on top of each stack. They stopped for a hug and a kiss from her, then off to the hallway door.

When they were gone, Rosa limped to the couch. She straightened the cover and sat down, lifting her feet on the seat and resting back against the armrest. The blanket that had landed on the floor made a light cover for her legs. She didn't like to show her feet. One of them wasn't shaped right from birth, and Rosa had learned to live with it all these years. It felt good to get them up on the couch after a long day of standing on them. She'd just rest here for a little bit and then head for one of the boy's beds to sleep tonight. Rosa had given her own bedroom to their two guests. She smiled softly. She was thinking of how she'd come to meet her friend.

Mellie, she'd called herself. Rosa knew that Mellie wasn't her real name, just like Abbey wasn't her injured friend's, either. She'd had to be careful, she'd said. In her line of work, she needed to protect herself. Rosa understood, and accepted her story. Few people could have done what Mellie had done to help them. Rosa thought back to those days, the bad times when she and her family had first run into trouble. Life had been good to them for a long time. Her family had come one by one, most of them settling right here in this building.

Then the earthquake had come to Haiti.

Everything had collapsed there, not just the buildings. Nothing worked. No food, no water, people buried in the rubble. The country was overwhelmed. Everything had just stopped. Good people had flooded in to help. But soon it was clear that others had come with a different motive - to profit from the chaos.

Drug dealers, smugglers. They'd slipped into Haiti while no one could notice. Haiti was the perfect place to set up shop, smuggling drugs by the ton to the U.S.. And once they'd taken hold in Haiti, they looked next door to Rosa's country to expand even further.

Her husband, Johanny, owned a business there. Every few weeks he returned to the island to keep track of things. But one time he'd had visitors on his way home. As he left the building that evening, three men stopped him on the street and told him to get into their car. He hesitated, then started to run, but one of them lifted a black gun, one of those automatic ones that fires so many bullets. He stopped in his tracks and then got into their car.

Rosa could still feel chills when she thought of him in that moment. Inside the car, they checked him for weapons and blindfolded him. Even with the blindfold, he could tell from the feel of the road that they were leaving the city and heading to the countryside. He tried to pay attention to the turns and the sounds around him as they drove. It was a long time until they stopped and got him out of the car. When they took off his blindfold they were standing on a dirt road surrounded by farm fields.

He could see the green of tall sugarcane in the darkness. Deserted. No houses or lights anywhere that he could see. This had to be more than just a robbery. Johanny began to believe he wasn't going to make it back. One of the men approached, his hat brim pulled low to cover his eyes. It was then that he noticed the others' uniforms. Police. Police, except for the man with the hat. He was dressed like an _agricultor rico, _a wealthy farmer.

As the one with the hat came closer, Johanny could see something in his hand - a machete, the kind they used to cut sugarcane in the fields. Johanny took a step back.

"Don't run," the man called to him. Johanny hesitated.

"We're not here to hurt you. We just want to talk." The man in the hat stopped in front of him.

"What do you want?" Johanny asked. His voice sounded braver than he felt inside.

"A little business. We want to have a little business with you." The man's face tipped up toward him, but his eyes were still hidden by the brim. Johanny could just see the jaw and his teeth as he spoke. He was speaking Spanish, but the accent and some of the words were wrong. It was clear he wasn't from here.

"A man like you, with a good business like yours, should be more careful. There are criminals around. They want to take your money. They stop at nothing to get it." Johanny understood. He knew what was coming next.

"We protect you. We keep the criminals away. You and your family are safe." He waited for a little while, as if he were giving it some thought. And then he asked the obvious question.

"And what does this cost, to keep me safe?"

"So little. You will never miss it, someone like you with a good business."

Johanny kept silent. And so did the man in the hat. Johanny watched the man's hands, the shiny blade hanging down toward the ground. Then the man turned to the others and swiped toward the car. They nodded and moved off, leaving the two men facing each other.

The man in the hat raised his arm between them. The machete dangled from his fist. He let it go and the tip buried itself in the dirt. The man in the hat backed up and turned away to the waiting car. Johanny watched him go, unsure of what to do. Then the headlights flashed on, blinding him. He threw his arm up to block it, and started backing away. The engine revved, and for a moment, he expected it to come right at him. He swung his head around. No place to hide. If it came for him, he was dead.

It revved louder, then lurched forward, then stopped, then lurched forward again and stopped. He heard the men laughing inside. They revved it again and tore forward, but jerked to the left a second later, just missing him with their bumper, spewing dust and stones all over him. In the haze of dust he could see their car jouncing on the rutted road, headlights bouncing in the darkness. He watched them go, and then he sank to his knees on the ground.

**Outside the Bronx apartment building**

A white panel truck sat idling on the street. In a little while a man dressed in black, with his cap pulled down low made his way to the back of the truck. He rapped lightly on the metal and the door popped open. As he climbed in, he pulled his cap higher on his head, and nodded to the others inside.

"It's that one, over there," he said, pointing to the tiled opening at the back of Rosa's apartment. Two of the others leaned forward to see where he was pointing and then they readied themselves to follow. He pulled his cap down lower again, turned to the last one left in the truck, and signaled they were heading in.

On his way out earlier, he'd twisted the two lone lamp bulbs lighting the back lot, dousing their light. They made their way unseen then to the opening in the wall that led to Rosa's apartment. The heavy drape hung down at the opening and inside, the tile floor made little tapping sounds of their footsteps.

One of them opened the screen, and another stepped forward to try the door. Locked. Hardly a minute passed before the lock was jimmied, and the three of them entered the kitchen. The man with the cap pointed ahead and the others followed. At the hallway, he pointed to one of them, and then to the hallway door in the living room. He watched him step carefully across the floor, passing the sleeping form on the couch, to take up his position next to the door. Then the two headed down the hall toward Rosa's bedroom.

Shaw's eyes opened. She lifted her head and the room lurched and spun. Her hands went out to steady herself, but that wasn't good at her left shoulder. She groaned and pulled her arm back closer to her body. Shaw thought about pulling off the swathe so both arms would be free if she needed them, but the sound of it pulling apart would give her away.

She sat forward in her chair, spinning inside her head again, and she had to grab for the arm of the chair. A wave of nausea started to rise from the spinning, but she fought to control it. Shaw was sure there was someone in the hallway. It wasn't Rosa. She had a limp. It might be one of her kids or her grandkids, though. Shaw looked at her wrist, but her watch was missing. It seemed like it must be the middle of the night. No one should be lurking around out there.

She tried to piece things together as fast as she could. Root had come back after ditching the van. Root. That's right. Root was here. Shaw looked over at the bed. Root had gone to sleep next to her, but Shaw didn't want both of them sleeping, so she'd gotten up to sit in the chair. She'd pushed the pile of clothes on the floor, and under them was her holster, reeking of blood, with her gun inside. That made her feel better. She'd sat there in the dark until the sound in the hall stirred her. Sound in the hall. That's right. She grabbed her head. Hard to think. She was shivering. Cold. Sweating, too. She felt her pulse in her neck. Two a second and thready. Damn. This wasn't good. Didn't think she could stand. Try.

Shaw pushed herself off with her right hand, and the room started spinning hard. Her hand held tight to the chair. Over her shoulder, the bedroom door opened. No choice. She let go and lifted her gun, pointing toward the door. The barrel wavered in the air as another wave of spinning came, intense like nothing before it.

Shaw knew she was falling, but it was over so fast she couldn't land well. Right on her bad shoulder. The last thing she remembered was the sound of Root calling her name.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20: the friends I told you about; number three;**

* * *

**Bronx apartment, same day**

Rosa's eyes opened, and for a moment she was confused where she was. Then she realized she'd fallen asleep in the living room. It seemed like something had wakened her – a sound. She thought she'd heard a noise in the apartment – and there it was again. Voices. Maybe there was trouble with her guests; she'd better go check on them.

But as she sat herself up on the couch there was movement in the darkness near her front door. She flinched. Someone was standing there, feet away – someone in her house. Her heart grabbed in her chest and she found herself rising up to defend herself.

But before she could holler for help, he stepped forward from the shadows – holding his hands out as though he didn't want her to be frightened. He was gesturing, speaking English, walking toward her. She didn't understand the words, and she backed away. At the same moment, there was noise in the hallway. Rosa swung her head that way and saw more people coming down the hall.

She recognized the injured woman, Abbey, carried like dead weight in the arms of a second man. Two women followed after; her guest, Mellie, was one and the other she didn't know. They spoke together intently as though they knew each other. Rosa was relieved for the moment. They all seemed to know each other. She and her family were not in danger after all.

The tall one at the front door took another step toward her, saying something in English that she didn't catch. Mellie looked up and realized she was there in the living room, with the tall stranger.

"Rosa, it's okay," she said in Spanish. Mellie walked away from the others and straight to Rosa. The two sat back down on the couch and Mellie grabbed for Rosa's hands. She smiled a tired smile at the older woman. The tall man from the front door moved next to them to listen. In Spanish he heard her say:

"These are the friends I told you about, Rosa. They came to move us to a safe place to help Abbey. She is feeling very bad now." Root did the best she could in Spanish, trying to make Rosa understand. The people in her apartment were here to help the two of them. Rosa nodded then. She understood.

"What can I do to help?" Rosa said, and Root smiled at her, again.

"You did too much already," Root whispered. In the hallway behind them, Root could hear the sound of Rosa's family, wakened from their rooms by the noise in Rosa's bedroom. Rosa waved them off, telling them everything was okay and she would explain in a few minutes. They stayed there, watching everything unfold.

The Team had found the apartment where the two of them, Root and Sameen, had holed up with Rosa and her family. They'd come in quietly in the middle of the night looking for the two of them, not sure what they'd find.

Sameen, or Abbey as Rosa knew her, had tried to protect Root from whatever the sounds were in the hallway. Neither one of them had a clue who it was out there coming into their room, unannounced. But once she'd tried to stand up, Sameen had passed out and hit the floor. Root was worried – they needed to get her back to the safe house and find out what was wrong.

Sameen had lost a lot of blood today. And Root kept thinking of what Sameen had said before. The bullet had broken her collarbone. There were blood vessels nearby, she'd said. If she didn't keep her arm stable, the sharp ends could puncture them and make her bleed inside where they couldn't see. Root's worry started to turn to alarm.

Root lifted Rosa's hands in hers. "We have to go now."

The two women stood, and Rosa pulled Root against her. She hugged her shoulders and kissed her on the side of her cheek. "God be with you, Mellie. And with Abbey, too."

Root backed away, mouthing thanks to her in Spanish. The tall man at her side followed, and Rosa watched the two of them head for her kitchen and the back door. The others were well ahead.

In a moment she followed after, gathering her family standing in the hallway. The little troupe stopped on the tiled floor outside the kitchen. It was cold out there, and Rosa hugged herself, standing at the opening next to the heavy drape. She watched them move off through the darkened lot. The lights in the parking lot were out, but she could just make out the shape of a white van on the street beyond. Rosa watched them lift the wounded woman into the van; then the rest of them, one by one, climbed in. Root turned back to see if she had followed. They waved to one another one last time, and then Root climbed in and closed the door.

"I'll drive," Harper said, and pulled off her cap. She jumped forward into the front seat, while the others in the back worked on Shaw. Joey slid her from his arms onto one of the seats at the side of the van. Logan grabbed for a heavy blanket folded on the floor. He leaned forward and handed it to Root. She shook it open over the top of Sameen, while Joey checked her pulse. Too fast, and not very strong. Her skin felt cold and clammy. Joey was sure her pressure was low, too. He'd seen it before, overseas, when he was deployed: when guys were wounded, bleeding bad, they looked like this.

"Lift her legs up on something," he said, and Logan searched around him for something to use. A heavy box, full of keyboards and computer parts; he lifted it up on the seat, and slid it in under Shaw's legs. Root adjusted the blanket over her, again.

"How is she now?" Root said.

"Shocky," Joey said. He looked over at Finch, sitting in the shadows, concern in his eyes.

"The nearest trauma center. We'll head there instead. We're not going to lose her," Finch said. He turned to tell Harper, but she was already on it. The van sped through the streets, sliding through traffic even at this time of the night. Finch weighed contacting Mr. Reese. Having him meet them at the hospital would give them added security from the people who had gone after Miss Shaw and Miss Groves. On the other hand, he risked divulging their location and destination.

He made his decision and picked up his cell, tapping out this message to Mr. Reese:

_CIP 1111_

**Midtown Manhattan safe house:**

Reese was just finishing his preparations. He'd slept fitfully for a few hours, but then woke to his cellphone going off. When he saw who it was, he was tempted to take the call right then. He'd held the phone in his hand, staring at the screen, feeling the buzz in his palm. Every fiber of him wanted to answer that call, to answer as though everything was fine there on the East Coast, as though he wasn't waiting in a safe house for wounded coming in any minute.

But he'd closed his eyes, instead, and let it go on buzzing until it stopped. Then he watched for any message from the caller. No message. Matt would call again; Reese was sure of it. Things were going to get complicated now. Discovering the family he never knew he had was something Reese hadn't expected. And once he'd known, he realized it was only a matter of time before he was exactly in this place: choosing. Choosing which man he was going to be.

Could he keep these two lives separate? And for how long? But instead of thinking any more about it, he'd set himself to work.

Shaw had a closet full of supplies, and he stepped into it, pulling out what he thought she'd need, memorizing what was there and where it was, in case he needed something later in a hurry. She'd crammed a lot of stuff into this walk-in closet. He hoped they wouldn't need much of it.

Reese grabbed what he'd seen her use in the past, not only for the times she'd put _him_ back together again, but when she'd worked on some of the others, too. He pulled out a box of gauze pads, a bottle of dark brown antiseptic, some packages of sutures, a bag of IV fluid and the tubing, some IV catheters, syringes, blue drapes, gloves. She had a drawer full of sterile instruments in clear packages. He rifled through them, looking for the ones he thought she might need and pulled a few of them out for her. Then he carried all of it into one of the bedrooms where they'd set up something like a mini hospital room. There were overhead hooks on a pole to hang fluids, and tanks of oxygen corralled in a corner, with a strap across the front so they didn't fall over and launch one of them through the apartment walls like a rocket. He laid out the supplies and instruments on a tall metal roll-around tray like they had in the hospital. Shaw liked everything laid out right where she needed it when she worked. She was like a machine.

Just then, he felt his cell buzzing again, and pulled it out. He swiped the screen and saw the message Finch had sent: _CIP 1111._ He looked up for a moment – Change In Plans, 1111. The number was their designation for a destination hospital. Things had gone bad then, he thought. They were bailing on their plans to come to the safe house. If they were letting him know, then they wanted him there, too. He frowned, thinking of who it might be and how bad it was that they couldn't deal with it here. He turned around and headed for the front of the apartment, grabbing his heavy coat, and sliding his gun into his holster.

Outside, the wind hadn't let up. It was cold and heartless, penetrating through his coat and stinging his face and hands. He hustled down the street away from the deli, back toward the garage where he'd parked before.

This was no commercial parking garage. Finch had bought the building years ago and had turned it into office space at the top, and floors of parking below, just one of such buildings he owned, scattered around Manhattan. They stored vehicles, motorcycles, and some gear and weapons in these strategic locations.

Just as he was getting to the garage, his cell went off again in his pocket. He had to open his coat to get to it, and the wind cut in through the opening, punishing him. He cupped the cell in his hands against the stinging wind.

_UA OTW_

Reese dropped the cell into his outside pocket and started running for the entrance of the garage. Inside, he headed for a bin with a sloping cover hanging on one wall. It looked like a feed bin in the barn on a farm. He slid his finger into a black reader on one side and heard the click of the locks opening.

Under the lid he reached in for a long heavy case, and lifted it up. Metal clacked inside the case. Reese hoisted it over his shoulder and hustled toward one of the vehicles, sliding the case inside. The key was in the middle console between the front seats. He started her up and put it into drive, then jerked forward through the double wide doors, out onto the street. He watched the doors close behind him after he tripped the circuit driving through. Reese swung to the left and drove half a dozen more blocks, turning left again, heading the wrong way down the side street.

Reese looked at his watch. Still time. He unzipped the case next to him. It barely fit inside the cab of his truck – the long, heavy fluted barrel of this fight-ender. The M82 sniper rifle was more than a match for anything headed his way. It could take out a golf ball-sized target nearly two miles away. Power _and_ accuracy.

Reese thought about the message on his cell. Things had changed again. The van had come under attack – _UA_ – and they were on the way – _OTW_ – to him. He was going to put up a diversion with his sniper rifle, to give his Team some cover. They just needed to get near him and he'd take care of the rest. He checked his watch again. It was time.

He slid out of his seat and pulled the long barrel out of its case. He wouldn't need the tripod. The side of his truck would support the heavy barrel. He pulled the ammo box out of the truck and snapped it in place underneath. It would give him ten rounds. More than enough to end this.

His hands were cold, and he could barely feel the iron sights as he swung them up into place. Reese leaned down and looked through the scope. Thanks to the streetlights, he could see as if it were daylight on the street. Any minute, they'd be coming into view. If they hadn't been able to shake the bad guys and were still being chased, then he had the answer. He'd stop them in their tracks with a shot through the engine block. The round from this rifle would make a mess of things inside an engine, and his Team could get away. He'd cover them until they got to safety blocks behind him at the safe house.

A cab drove by every so often, unaware of him parked on the side street, but otherwise the street was empty of traffic. Through the scope, Reese saw a white van fly through a red light and turn, coming his way. He leaned into the stock and pulled it back hard against his shoulder.

That must be them.

Reese saw the van accelerate, and then behind it, two black SUVs rounded the same corner, swinging wide, accelerating in his direction. He could see flashes of light, gunfire, from the windows of the SUVs. Reese aimed at one of them and waited for it to swing out from behind the white van. As soon as he could take the shot, he squeezed it off and felt the stock slam back against his shoulder. The thunder-clap sound of it reverberated in the canyon of buildings around him.

Through the scope he saw the hit. The front panel exploded apart, and the hood flew up and backwards toward the windshield. Clouds of steam and fluid gushed from the engine as it lurched and rolled forward to a stop. A door opened and smoke came billowing out.

He switched back to the chase. The white van was swerving, keeping the SUV from pulling alongside. Reese leaned in again, sighting through the scope. The van kept swinging in front of the SUV. It was going to be a risky shot. If it swerved the wrong way, his shot would take out the van instead of the SUV. He steadied the rifle and took a breath, then let it out and held it. The van swung into his line of sight, pushing the SUV off again from pulling alongside, and white flashes lit up on the near side. The van swung away from the shots and that was all he needed. He squeezed off his shot and felt the shock of the recoil and the sound thundering around him.

In the scope he could see the SUV careening off to one side, steaming and gushing fluid under the engine block. It ended up stopping in the intersection of a side street. He could see men jumping out of it, bending forward, down on their knees.

With the scope, he returned to the white van. Still rushing his way. He swung back along the street behind it with the scope, looking for another SUV. There should be another one. Two chasers and one backup if the chasers failed. The van was coming fast, and Reese didn't see anyone else. He lifted the barrel from the side of his truck and slid the rifle into the cab. He jumped in, yanking it into drive as the van passed him. He screeched out behind it, following closely, and blocks down, it pulled to one side in front of the building with the safe house. Reese pulled in behind it at an angle into the street, blocking it from traffic coming up behind them. He jumped out on his side, and ran up to the driver's side. Harper was there, pushing her door open. Reese backed up, and grabbed the handle of the back door just as it was opening from the inside. Reese had his weapon out, pointing it up to the sky, looking inside the darkened van.

"I'll cover you. Go!" he said, and he stepped out between the van and his truck into the street, watching for any sign of more coming their way. Logan and Joey lifted someone wrapped in a blanket out of the back and across the sidewalk, into the front of the building. He saw a woman's figure jump out and race inside after them. Then Finch got out next. Reese made eye contact with him before he turned and headed for the building. Harper came around the back and slammed the doors closed. She headed toward him.

"I'm gonna keep driving, and take anyone else coming with me," she said. Reese nodded. He stopped her by grabbing her arm as she started to turn away.

"Who?" he said in his whisper-voice. She looked up at him, and then understood what he was asking. Her brow furrowed.

"Shaw."

Harper could see the look in his eyes and his lips tighten.

"How bad?" he shot at her. She shook her head, her eyes refusing to look at his. His hand clamped on her arm.

"She's bad, Reese."

He looked up the front of the building at the window where the apartment was, and she saw him shiver for a second. His face and eyes went dead, and a look came over him like she'd never seen before. It gave her the creeps. Like some wild thing, deadly and utterly soul-less had taken over inside him.

Whatever that was, she had no wish to hang around. She turned, and pulled her arm away from him, rushing for the driver's side of the van. A moment later, she was pulling away from the curb, leaving Reese there in the street. He jumped into the truck and pulled forward, swinging left around the next corner, then heading back for the garage.

He had an uneasy feeling. Where was number three?


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21: "No worse, Mr. Reese."**

* * *

**Mid-town NY, same day**

Harper swung the van over to the curb, watching in her rear-view mirror for anyone following. So far, no takers. She hadn't seen anyone since dropping the Team off back at the safe house. There was something she needed to do now if they were going to flush out the ones who were chasing them.

She hopped out on her side and ran around to the curb. A few brightly colored bins sat together on the sidewalk, and she fed coins into the top of one of them. The handle released and she swung the front down to pull out the newspaper. Then on the passenger side of the van she opened the door and spread the paper over the front seat. On the floor mat in front of the seat were the cellphones from everyone who'd been riding with her when they were chased. Those men in the SUVs had locked onto someone's phone in their van and tracked them. So, now they were going to see if they could return the favor.

Harper grabbed the phones and spread them out on top of the newspaper so they weren't touching each other. Then she reached into a pocket of her jacket for a small unmarked canister. Finch had handed it to her from his briefcase back at the drop-off. She pulled the cap off and aimed it at the phones. A fine mist sprayed out over the top of the phones and she moved the canister around to cover as much surface as she could. Then she capped the canister and slid it back into her pocket.

Harper fanned the phones with her hand, drying the clear spray a little faster. Then she picked up the whole newspaper with the phones on top and walked it over to the corner trash bin. She tipped the newspaper and the phones slid off into the bin. Then she folded the paper and dropped that in, too, like anybody's discarded _Daily News._ If someone was still tracking one of the phones, they'd find them all together in the trash, as though the Team had tried to escape by dumping them. Handling the phones would transfer the marker in the spray to the handlers, and for the next few weeks it would be detectable on the skin, on clothing, on anything that touched the phones. Harper smiled as she jumped back into the van and drove off. She'd circle around for a little while longer, then head back to the garage near the safe house.

Meanwhile, Reese had pulled inside and parked the truck, leaving the key in the console between the seats. The rifle went back inside the zippered case and he stowed it with the ammo box inside the bin. There was no time to reset it now – he needed to get back to the apartment.

Reese kept thinking about Shaw; it bothered him. He couldn't remember a time when she'd been down like this. She'd been injured before, but it was always at the same time he'd been hurt, too. Never by herself. She was tougher than any of them, and it was hard to think of her like this. He left the garage and turned into the wind swirling around outside. Long legs like his could eat up a lot of territory with each stride, and he made it down the back way to the street in no time. After that, though, he had to slow down and pay attention to his surroundings. The main street offered no cover for him over the next block and a half. He stayed in shadow as much as possible and surveyed everything within visual - it reminded him of nights on patrol in Afghanistan. The hair prickled at the back of his neck.

The last 50 yards were the toughest. Each step felt like an invitation for someone to take a shot. He looked into every dark doorway, every alley space between shops, any place that someone could hide. His eyes swept the buildings, too, on the far side of the street. When he got to his building, Reese stabbed the code into the panel next to the door. In the wind, he wrestled it open, stepping in and pulling it closed right behind him. Then he stepped deeper into the lobby, away from all the glass at the front. It was empty at this time of night and Reese kept moving to the back of the lobby. He didn't want to stand there in the open, waiting for the elevator; he'd take the stairs. The door to the stairwell was just past the elevator bank, and he checked through the glass before he opened it. There was an overhead light at the bottom of the stairs, and it was dim, flickering and buzzing. He could barely see around him with the door shut.

Reese leaned back against the wall inside the door. It was just too much distraction with the darkness, the light flickering and the buzzing. He needed to assess his situation before he went any further.

The air was cool - and in a small space like this, a warm human would heat the air pretty fast. It smelled stale and flat - no telltale sign of someone passing through. No dust kicked up, either, inside the stairwell. He started to relax a bit. A minute passed. Nothing. Reese took the stairs three at a time and got to the second floor landing. Through the small glass window in the door it looked empty in the hallway. Reese pulled his gun and held it upright as he swung the door open. Then he raised it up in front of him as he pivoted to the hinge side, aiming down the hallway. No one there that he could see.

The apartment was down at the far end, plenty of time to find out if anyone was there who shouldn't be. Reese stepped forward into the dim hallway, thick carpeting muffling the sounds of his footsteps. He passed the elevator bank and sighted down the rest of the hallway. Still nothing. At the doorway of 222, he tipped toward the scanner to present his eye, and the latch clicked. The door opened from the inside, and he stepped in.

Logan was there inside. He pointed his chin toward the kitchen and the wing behind it with all the bedrooms. Reese wasted no time and strode through to the room he'd set up earlier for Shaw, not realizing that it would be Shaw herself as the patient. Harold met him at the door when he got there.

"Mr. Reese, they are working on Miss Shaw right now." The lines in his face showed his concern.

Reese sidestepped Harold and looked inside for himself. There was an IV bag hanging over the bed, clear fluid inside it. He could see the liquid streaming down through the clear drip chamber below the bag; wide-open, running in as fast as it could go into her right arm. Joey and Root were just backing up after taping the tubing in place. Reese craned to see around them to take a look at Shaw, and his breath caught when he saw her. Harper was right. She looked bad.

"What happened?" he said in his whisper-voice. Root looked stricken. She couldn't tear herself away from staring at Sameen. Reese grabbed her arm and whirled her around to face him.

"Talk to me,"he said, in a terser whisper. Root shook her head to clear her thoughts and then started.

"We were at our diner, early. It was a little busy, but then, all of a sudden, everyone was gone, and we knew something was wrong. We ran for the back, and men in black uniforms came running in from the front. We blocked the back door and ran down the alley into the street. Sameen was a little behind me and when I looked back, she was hit. Top of her shoulder. Shot," she said, reaching for her own left shoulder to show Reese.

"Who?" Reese interrupted.

"I don't know. We couldn't see anyone. I dragged her around a corner into an alley. We had to climb our way out, but we made it. She lost a lot of blood, though."

"Where'd you go?"

"I stole a van and took her to a safe place I know in the Bronx - as far away from you and Harold and the team as we could get. I didn't wanna take a chance that they could find the rest of the team," she said, and turned away, looking back at Shaw.

"She looks terrible! I'm afraid she might be bleeding inside," Root said.

Reese looked back at her lying there. He'd seen enough of it through the years – people in all kinds of bad shape. And he'd made a lot of them look that way himself. It went with the job.

Reese had seen enough to know Shaw was going to need more than they could do for her here. Unless she turned around pretty fast after getting this fluid, he didn't think they could fix what was wrong.

He turned back to Harold at the door. Logan was there, too. The three stepped away and down the hall to the kitchen. Reese pulled a couple of mugs down when they got there and filled two with coffee from the urn. Harold waved off anything for himself.

"I want to show you something, Reese," Logan said. He slid his laptop in front of them on the counter and started his video loop. It showed the two women, Root and Shaw, running down the alleyway at the back of the diner that morning. Then the camera switched to another view from across the street at the end of the alley. You could see them stop at the end and look both ways for hostiles, then run across the street. Root was ahead of Shaw at that point. Then Logan reached over and hit a key that slowed the video speed.

"Watch this," he said. Reese leaned in closer to see. In the middle of the screen he could see the moment of impact. At the top of Shaw's left shoulder there was a sudden ripple and spray through her jacket. The force threw her forward, and she nearly lost her footing. He could see her face react in pain, and she grabbed for the left arm, turning.

"Watch her eyes," Logan said. And in slow-motion Reese could see her turning to her left, looking upward – where the roof line would be, not straight back behind her. She must have known that the shooter was higher, shooting down at her.

"Single, clean shot from a rooftop. What does that sound like to you?" Logan said.

"Sniper? She'd be dead – unless the point was to wound, not kill," Reese said. He starting thinking through a number of possibilities.

"What happened tonight, on your way back?" Reese asked. He needed to start putting some of the puzzle pieces together. Harold explained:

"We tracked Miss Shaw and Miss Groves to an apartment in the Bronx and surveilled the location. When we expected that everyone would be sleeping, the team entered the apartment and found them. Miss Shaw was already in this state, and we planned to divert to the Trauma Center instead of coming here. I elected to inform you, Mr. Reese. The individuals who did this are still out there. We needed reinforcements if we were changing our plans. Apparently, they have devised a method to track my phone. Within minutes, we had company, and decided to return here, instead."

"Your phones?" Reese asked.

"Miss Rose took them with her and is setting them up for a tagging maneuver right now." Reese nodded to Harold, picturing Harper tagging the phones and leaving them in a location where only the ones chasing the Team could find them. He pulled out his own phone and handed it to Harold.

"I'll destroy this one, Mr. Reese, and I'll have replacements ready for all of us later today." Reese nodded, then raised the next point.

"We need to talk about Shaw. She looks like she's gonna need more than what we can do here, Finch." Reese looked at Harold, who was hesitating, staring down at the floor.

"I came to the same assessment myself, Mr. Reese."

"If we run into trouble on the way – " Logan said, looking from one to the other. Neither said anything out loud. Reese drained his coffee and slammed the cup down on the counter, heading back to Shaw.

Joey was gone, and Reese could hear the shower running down the hall. Root was sitting on a chair on the far side of Shaw's bed. She was leaning forward with her hands circled around Shaw's hand. Reese stepped closer, and reached out to check her skin. Cool, pale. He slid his fingertips down to her wrist and felt for her pulse. It was hard to find it. Weak and fast when he finally located it. He reached across to her left shoulder and lifted the front of her shirt to see the dressing. It was high on the shoulder, and he could picture the angle the shot must have followed to hit there. He looked at Root's hands next, and noticed how pale Shaw's skin looked against hers. Reese said to himself _she needs blood. Now._

He turned away and went out into the hall and down to the walk-in closet where Shaw had her supplies. Inside, he started looking through packages of tubing, Y-connectors, stopcocks. In a little while he'd filled a deep, pink plastic basin with everything he needed and headed back to the room. He laid a few things out on the metal tray next to her bed. Root watched him.

When he was set, he thought of one more thing he needed. Back out to the kitchen. It was in there somewhere. He remembered seeing it, but didn't recall exactly where. Reese swept his eyes around the whole kitchen, then again. He closed his eyes, trying to visualize where he'd seen it. Drawer. It was in a drawer. He started opening and closing them, one after another until he found what he was looking for. It was a small ceramic tile about the size of his palm. He didn't know what it was used for, but it was the right color: white. He gathered everyone and walked them down to the bedroom. He handed each one a wrapped needle, the kind they used on the end of a syringe.

"Open it up and have it ready," he said. Then he moved close to Shaw and lifted up her right hand, rubbing it hard between his hands, especially at the tips of her fingers. When her fingers were warmed from the rubbing, he pulled the ceramic tile over next to her hand, peeled the wrapper off another needle and stabbed one of her fingers with it. Root jumped. "What are you doing?"

He didn't answer, but milked the finger until a drop of blood formed, then dripped onto the tile. Then another, another, and one last one – four drops of her blood spread out on the surface of the white tile.

"OK, each one of you stick yourself with your needle. I need a drop of blood from each of you. Do it fast," he said.

Reese watched them prick themselves and squeeze their fingers. He moved the tile next to each one of them, showing them where to let the drop fall. Each one added a drop of blood to one of Shaw's on the tile. Reese went last, and then he laid the tile carefully on the metal tray, checking his watch. He swung the bright procedure lamp over to the tray and flipped the switch on. A few minutes later, he leaned in close, inspecting the blood spots. One after another, there were tiny darker red dots floating in the blood spots, except for one. Only one was clear of the tiny dots. His. He was a match. Joey stepped in next to him and looked down at the tile.

"Who was it?" he asked.

"Me," Reese said in his whisper-voice. He started rolling up his sleeves, looking at his veins.

"What's going on, Reese?" Root said. Joey spoke up instead.

"Walking blood bank." Root looked confused for a moment, and then seemed to catch on. Joey went on.

"In combat, in an emergency, if we're cut off from supplies of blood, we can donate our own to save a brother's life. Only one of us can donate to Shaw. The others don't match. That's what he was doing – testing to see which of us could donate. If little specks form when the blood is mixed together, it's not a match. Reese is the only one that matched."

They all looked at him. But he was busy figuring out how he was going to set up the tubing with the Y-connectors, stopcocks, and a large syringe. Once he had it in his mind how he was going to arrange everything, he went into the bathroom and took off his shirt. He washed his hands and arms twice with soap and rinsed the skin carefully, drying them as he walked back.

Joey had rolled up his sleeves and was opening the packages of tubing. Then he donned sterile gloves and started fitting the parts together. Reese sat down on a chair near Shaw's bed, dragging a waste basket over with his foot. He held his right arm over the basket and told Root to come around and pour the brown antiseptic on his skin. She doused him with the liquid and then looked at the label. It smelled like iodine, and that's what was in the bottle. She put on gloves, too, and rubbed the iodine all over the inner side of Reese's elbow; then she doused it again and wiped it down with new sterile gauze. Reese talked through the steps with Joey. He'd been able to get the IV started on Shaw on his third try. So now he needed to connect Reese up to the tubing as the blood donor.

"Haven't done any of this for a while," he said when Reese asked him about his training. "But it's just like riding a bike, right? You never forget," he said, grinning at Reese. When they were ready, Joey sat facing Reese on another chair. He would use a big bore needle on Reese to get into the vein, connect it to the tubing system they had fashioned, then fill a large syringe with his blood, and send it back out to Shaw by turning a stopcock. It would flow out through the other leg of the tubing into her arm. In combat situations they had a special bag that collected the blood and it had a blood thinner in it so it didn't clot. They had nothing like that here, so they would need to be quick and keep things moving.

Joey was poised to do it, and Root was ready to tape the needle in place once he was in the vein. She circled a stretchy band around Reese's arm above the elbow and pulled it tight. Joey leaned in and Reese steadied his arm in a spot where Joey could get a good angle. He took a deep breath, and noticed Joey doing the same thing. Then he watched the needle pierce his skin and enter the bulge of the vein. He tried not to flinch with the stick. Blood started flowing through the tubing toward the end where the syringe would attach. They needed to get the air out of the system so the syringe wasn't attached yet while the tubing filled.

Seconds later, the leading edge was at the far end of the tubing and Joey attached the syringe, while Root finished taping the needle in place. Joey drew back on the plunger of the syringe, filling it as fast as it would go. Then Root opened the stopcock the other way and Joey _pushed_ the plunger this time, sending the flow out the next piece of tubing heading to Shaw. Once the tubing on that side of the stopcock was filled, Root detached the tubing from the IV, and connected the blood tubing, instead. Now they had a full circuit, from Reese to Shaw. Joey pushed with steady pressure until the syringe was empty, and all the blood had gone into Shaw. He looked up at Reese.

"We need eight more," he said, running the math in his head. Root switched the stopcock to let blood flow from Reese into the syringe again.

"Finch, how does she look?" Reese asked. He couldn't see Shaw with everybody around him. Finch had gone around the far side of the bed to keep an eye on Shaw during this procedure. There was still a possibility of a transfusion reaction. If so, they'd have to stop. Finch looked at the pale form of Shaw on the bed.

"No worse, Mr. Reese."


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22: the choic****es he'd made (rated T, for adult situations);**

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**Mid-town Manhattan safe house, same day**

**Please note****: In ****the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1 there are suggested music pieces to accompany this and other Chapters to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them...**

Root walked down the hallway to the kitchen. Breakfast smells beckoned, and she heard men's voices from the kitchen. Joey, Logan and Reese were there, sitting at the table downing egg and ham sandwiches, juice and coffee. She noticed Reese seemed a little quieter than usual, but the other two made up for it with their chatter. She had a little headache starting, and instead of going for a cup of tea, she pulled down another mug and drew off some coffee from the urn. It tasted strong, black, so she splashed in a little milk to tame it down.

"There's more food in the pan over there," Joey called, pointing to the stove. Root lifted the covers on the pans. Not bad for a bunch of guys left on their own in the kitchen, she thought. There was a lone cold piece of toast on a plate, and she piled some scrambled eggs and ham from the pans on top, then went around to the table and sat down. They slid the salt and pepper shakers and a bottle of ketchup down her way, but she'd already taken a bite without. She was hungry.

"How's Shaw?"Joey asked. Her eyes narrowed and she looked down toward the table.

"About the same. Holding her own," she said. There were dark circles under her eyes, and they could see she looked exhausted. The toll of everything was starting to show on her.

"Why don't you catch some sleep while you can? Harper can keep an eye on her," Logan said. She nodded as though she would, but nobody at the table believed it.

Down the hall in the last bedroom at the end, Finch sat at his desk, an overhead lamp shining on the middle. He was fiddling with a cellphone. Attached to it was a little black unit about the size of three postage stamps side-by-side. It was half-an-inch thick, with a heavy black wire protruding from either end. One of them was attached to the cellphone, the other to his laptop. He clicked the keyboard, making some final changes to a table entry on the screen and then, satisfied, disconnected the cellphone. That was the last one. He could distribute them all to the others a little later. The last thing he had to do was to disable the one Reese had given him.

As if on cue, the cell started to buzz on his desk. He stared at it for a moment. It kept on buzzing, and he connected it to the black unit. Data began scrolling on his screen. He was looking for the telltale sign of someone searching for Reese through his phone signal. But instead of someone pinging him through a local cell tower, he could tell it was someone calling from far away. Almost immediately, Harold's thoughts turned to Bellingham, the city where Reese's brother lived. It was nearly Christmas. Only logical, Harold thought, for family to reach out.

Harold put the phone down on the desk. It buzzed one more time, then stopped. He waited to see if there would be a message, or a follow up text. Nothing. It made him think about something he'd pushed from his mind. Again and again through the years. About Mr. Reese.

There were decisions he'd had to make along the way – regarding each of his operatives. In truth, a number of them at the beginning had failed to work out at all, and he'd banished them from the Team. Things were beginning to look quite desperate, then. Cases were coming in, with no one to intervene, no one with the right mix of skills, temperament, and invisibility. Harold had even tried to intervene himself back then. But he quickly realized his clumsy attempts were folly. He had no skill in surveillance beyond the electronic kind. And with his gimpy leg, his neck permanently stiffened with metal plates, and his vow not to handle weapons, Harold was clearly _not_ the right one.

The operative he needed likely did not exist: someone with superior surveillance and weapons skills; someone who could function beyond the boundaries of the law; who was single-minded, self-motivated; someone who might come to dedicate himself to their cause one day. And one final nagging issue: someone who wouldn't appear on anyone's radar – perhaps one already thought missing or dead. Harold realized he was asking too much.

Still, the early ones had looked promising. But as he soon found, brash and arrogant didn't work. Deceptive and too inquisitive was risky. Headstrong and violent felt uncontrollable. On and on, his choices failed. Harold's situation was fast becoming excruciating.

Until along came one who looked like a gift – at least, on paper. Ex-Army Ranger, special ops; ex-CIA, black ops; newly missing in action, presumed killed overseas on a mission. It took him days, and sleepless nights to track him down. Elusive, smart, Harold recalled looking forward to their first encounter. Their paths crossed, not by chance, in a small hospital in a wealthy suburb near Manhattan. Harold had disguised himself as an invalid, not so far from the truth in those days, and not unexpected on the floor of a hospital wing. Tall, dark-haired, square-jawed, with piercing blue eyes. Harold was prepared for someone who looked like a war hero.

In person, Mr. Reese looked more like a washout.

Harold leaned back in his chair, his face in shadow now. The lamp lit up his keyboard and the stacks of phones nearby. How could he have known then? How could he have known how all this would unfold? He'd had to make decisions. And he'd had to live with the choices he'd made.

Down the hall in the kitchen, Reese sat quietly at the table. The others had left now, and he was enjoying the smell of a fresh pot of coffee brewing. He'd lingered there alone. It felt like he was waiting for the potion he needed – since the transfusion, Reese could feel himself sinking a little lower with his energy, a little drained. He thought of Shaw then, and how she might be feeling.

It wasn't that long ago that she'd pulled him through his own brush with death. She'd stolen blood for him. Back then, the night they'd found him, he was ready to take the shot to end the life of a killer. To Reese, the one who'd given the order was just as guilty as the one who'd pulled the trigger.

That night on the street corner, Reese had taken the first two shots before either of them knew what had happened; and then Carter, right after. He shouldn't have lived through that night. He shouldn't have survived the next few. If it weren't for Shaw and the surgeon that Harold brought, Reese knew he wouldn't have made it. She'd stolen blood for him, to save his life. And once the surgeon was done, they'd worked through those first rocky nights to keep him alive. Shaw had sat with him, next to his bed, for days and nights. He didn't remember much of it. Just a few flashes, hazy memories that could have been true or dreams from a feverish mind. Fighting. He remembered he was always fighting. And it didn't seem like he was winning.

* * *

Down the hall, Root sat in her chair, pulled close to Sameen's bed. She leaned forward again, and checked the wound on her left shoulder. Clean and dry with no blood seeping through. She wondered about what was going on inside, deeper, where they couldn't see. Was she losing blood inside? Was she going to die? And leave her, again.

For all of her brilliance, all of her skills, her single-minded pursuit of the mission, Sameen had a glaring flaw. You couldn't trust her with your heart. No one Root could name had soared her higher or crashed her lower than Sameen. She could melt you with those smokey eyes, then tear your heart out the next day. It was all the same to her. Sameen was the quintessential unfaithful lover. And not that it was easy to get her attention. Threatening her with a hot hotel steam iron seemed to do the trick. But just as soon as Root had felt the heat, Sameen cooled and disappeared. Try as she might, Root could not let her go.

She remembered the time on the roof, looking across the street that separated their two buildings. And through the arched window on the other side, she'd seen them together, unclothed. Embracing. His long black hair falling forward as he lowered her from view. Root drove for miles and miles after that, unaware of her path, or her destination. Black and violent thoughts burst into her mind, and even she was afraid. Of herself. This was not the first time she'd had such thoughts. And not even the first time she'd acted on them. But only Sameen could take her this far. She knew she needed to let some of the charge drain off.

She'd pulled to a stop in the middle of the street. One of those tree-lined streets with the old stately homes, and the manicured lawns, and the pricey cars parked in front. Something about the image she had, of families cloistered together inside. It lit her fuse.

She opened her door, grabbing a long black flashlight from her seat. Root walked straight to the first car, and swung the heavy light. Glass shattered from the headlight and skittered across the street, glinting there like precious jewels. And then another, and another, down the street, both sides. Until she couldn't swing anymore. That, and the sound of sirens off in the distance, coming her way.

And the time, soon after, in this very safe house. She'd tracked Sameen and Reese here. Where else would they go? Both were beaten, left for dead in a basement in Queens. When they were found by the Team, they'd gone to a hospital first. She remembered Sameen in her room, Reese next door, and Fusco sitting watch in the hallway outside. She'd climbed in next to Sameen. But when she woke, in the middle of the night, the two were gone.

And that time, right here, in the shower. She'd just wanted Sameen to stay here. But there was Marco, her lover with the long black hair. She was going to Him that same night. She couldn't let it happen. Root had crept down the hall, while Sameen was in the shower. She'd pulled off her clothes in the hallway, and pushed the door open.

"What are you doing?" Sameen had said. And Root hadn't answered. She'd climbed in with her.

"This isn't going to work, Root," she'd said. So cold. She just wanted it to be like it was, before Marco. She tried to hold her, to kiss her, to try to make her understand what she was doing to her.

"Don't," she'd said. But Root wouldn't stop. Sameen had pushed her back.

"Get off me!" she'd said. This couldn't be right. This couldn't be what she meant. Root grabbed her, pushed her back against the wall, and sank her teeth into her lip. Root flew backwards, Sameen shoving her back against the handles so hard, it knocked the wind out of her.

Enraged then, Root swung her fist at Sameen. She'd never seen hands move that fast. Sameen blocked the punch with her left arm, and struck Root in the face with her right hand, open palm. Root remembered the sound of the slap. And she remembered hitting the wall, squarely, behind her again.

That was it. Enough. She couldn't bear to look at Sameen then. She couldn't bear to see the look in her eyes; empty, emotionless. So like Sameen.

Root left the shower and walked herself slowly down the hall, into her room, and into her bed. The wind whistled outside.


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23: Her first day. (rated T)**

* * *

**Oregon, September, 1998**

"Welcome to Holmes, Miss – uh, Miss Shaw is it?" the Principal said, peering up over the rim of his glasses. She could see the shiny skin of his scalp, with the few wisps of long gray hair sprouting from the top, and a swath of short gray hair stretching around behind one ear all the way to the other – trailing off to a full gray beard and mustache, neatly trimmed. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something back, but she just nodded in his general direction. Her eyes were elsewhere, taking in the details of his office walls, his desk, a jumbled bookcase full of photos and dusty plaques, a wool jacket hanging from the back of his door. She noticed where the smooth surface was broken in several spots and holes, from the work of moths, appeared. And then there was the smell of his tobacco, pipe tobacco, wafting from his clothes.

He smokes in his car, she thought to herself, and she pictured him driving with the windows rolled up and gray smoke slowly filling the inside until his face disappeared in the gray. The Principal scratched at the side of his face and grabbed a bit of his beard, pulling and rolling it between his fingers. It made a certain sound when he did it. When she turned back, he was staring at her, studying her like a bug under a hand lens. Typical.

Shaw backed away, turning toward the door, then out into the front office where the chubby secretary sat. She was making the morning announcements on the loudspeaker. She barely noticed Shaw passing, heading for the empty hallway. Outside, the small brass sign on the wall across the way told her which way to go for her homeroom class. She headed down the hall by herself. Overhead, she could hear the sound of the secretary's voice, shaky. Shaw closed her eyes and thought about the woman's face, full and round, with a thick wattle of loose skin hanging under her chin. She could picture the wattle shaking when the woman spoke, and how that would make her voice sound shaky, too.

"Miss – Shaw. Miss Shaw. Hold up there! Wait for me," the Principal called. She supposed she'd better stop and wait for him to catch up. In a little while he was there at her side, puffing a bit hard for the short distance he'd come. He's not in very good shape, she thought. And she noticed the motion of his chest under his vest, and the smell of pipe smoke on his breath. She turned away again, and started walking ahead down the hall.

"It's room 188, Miss Shaw," but she already knew that. She'd been coming here for almost a week now in the evening just before dark. She'd watched the place empty out after school, from her spot on a wooded hill above the parking lot. She would wait in the trees as car after car drove off. Hours after the last of the students had gone, she'd walk in from the trees – once the lot had emptied and just two cars remained. She already knew which were the open doorways and, when the time was right, she would enter the school through one of those. There was a certain thrill in entering the place so late, moving through the halls wherever she wished, evading detection.

As soon as she entered, she'd looked up at the hallway clock. At least half an hour – she'd have that much time to wander on her own. The two adults who were left inside had made their nightly pilgrimage to one of the cars parked under the trees in back. They wouldn't be noticing her, walking the halls, alone.

She pulled a piece of paper from her jeans, slim black jeans that fell in a straight line to the top of her boots – tall, and slim, too, hugging her legs, laced all the way to the top. The jeans were rolled at the bottom into cuffs that just overlapped the top of her boots. On top, she wore a thick soft sweater, black, worn inside-out, the way she'd always worn her tops since she was little. It hung down to the top of her thighs now. She'd grown some; it used to hang down to the middle of her thighs. And on her head she always wore the same knit cap, lined with a thick soft flannel that kept the itch away from her skin. She pulled it low, down to the top of her eyebrows. Black, of course, like everything else. These were the clothes she wore every day. Every day, the same thing.

The paper was neatly folded and creased, and she carefully opened it under a hallway light. There, type-written in pale black font, was her daily class schedule, with room numbers and names next to the time-of-day column.

Another new school. She'd lost count of them all – no, actually, she hadn't. She knew exactly how many, and the exact day she'd started at each, the weather outside, the smells inside, the time she'd arrived, the sun angle coming in through the windows - all the details of each and every one. That's how her brain worked. She remembered everything – her brain was like a vacuum cleaner, sucking up everything inside it. She could remember everything. It was harder not to.

Shaw walked the halls, smelling that familiar smell of floor soap – green soap, she had learned – that she tracked to a metal bucket on wheels, slid up next to the door of the janitor's closet – as though just filled and then abandoned. His mop sat next to it, leaning against a long line of lockers on that wall. She stopped and peered in. Inside the closet, she could barely see the outline of a dingy old white sink, deep enough for the rolling metal bucket to fit inside. And there were bottles and sprays, pungent smells, all manner of strange implements and tools hanging. It was another world in there, the closet door like a portal to an alien land tucked inside. It was hard for Shaw to break away.

She did, finally, and moved further down the hall, peering next at the room numbers and names. Each name was neatly written in block letters on paper slid into brass holders next to each door. Each room number was solid brass, too – raised numbers in a row next to the teacher's name plate. And the doors were heavy, oak stained dark and each one inset with a glass window. This was an old school, and small – just two floors, with wings on both ends of the middle corridor.

As she walked, her footsteps echoed in the empty hallways, but she didn't mind. There was time. After touring each floor, she walked through the cafeteria, empty now of students, each long table clean now. The kitchen door was closed and locked, but the smells still exited, grease and traces of pizza left from lunch. She always ended in the library, its double wooden doors pushed open, and a vacuum parked in the middle of the blue carpeting, ready to run when the janitor returned. She walked each aisle of the library, running her hands over the spines of the books, step by step in a cadence she heard in her head. The clock buzzed softly, and she looked up, surprised. Late. She was late leaving. That little thrill suddenly returned.

Shaw peered from the doorway down the hall, then down the other way. Empty. She stepped out, headed for the nearest exit, one that took her to the back of the building, under trees where some of the students liked to stand after school, passing a joint around between them. She could see the remains in the grass, caught at the edge of a concrete pad. She stayed in shadows under the trees, at the edge of the weathered cement, watching. Ahead, the back lot was nearly dark now and she couldn't see inside the cars. In a few minutes, she walked forward toward the lot. At its edge, she could see more of the grounds near the school, but no one was there. Maybe the two had already gone inside, while she was in the library. She waited, ready to head across the lot into the woods toward her house. When nothing moved, she stepped out into the light of an overhead parking lamp, just flickering to life. A few more glowed with yellow light out in the lot.

Just then a car door popped open in front of her, and Shaw stopped in her tracks. Two people climbed out, and she could hear the sounds of the two of them laughing in a certain way. The man pulled the woman closer, while she was pulling her blouse closed in front of her. She laughed again, and he pushed her back against the side of his car, pressing against her, reaching his hands under her top. Shaw could see his back and the shape of his shoulders and arms. He looked muscular, strong. She could hear the woman sighing out loud, her hands wrapped around the man's hips, pulling him closer to her body. Her head went back and she leaned further against the car. Shaw could see the man's hands then, through the opening in her blouse.

Shaw was trapped there, looking for a way to get around them, but then she heard a sound and her eyes went back to the couple. They were standing there looking at her. The woman stepped behind the man, grabbing her open blouse and pulling it closed to hide her breasts. Shaw stood there.

"What are you doing here, kid?" the man said, his voice low and harsh.

Shaw turned and walked as fast as she could across the lot, behind a small garage, and up the hill toward the woods. She looked back several times, but they weren't following after her. Once she got to the woods, she melted into them, safe now from anyone following.

"Miss Shaw, here we are."

The Principal stopped, and Shaw turned toward the classroom door. 188. The "1" was no longer missing. On her first visit here, she'd noticed that the "1" was missing from its spot. She remembered touching the space where the "1" was missing. She'd walked back and forth in front of the door, looking at the number, looking away, then back at the number. It bothered her, the missing "1" – just like the feeling of tags scraping on the inside of her collars. It bothered her, until she could think of nothing else. That next night she'd come prepared – with a black permanent marker. She'd stood there tracing the shape of the number, precisely, and then she'd filled it in so that the number looked like the same font as the others. Shaw looked at the spot now: 188. That's right. _That_ was her room number. The gray-bearded man seemed not to notice; he knocked twice, then opened the door and walked in ahead of her, calling to the students inside.

"Good morning, Class." When they all looked up, they saw Shaw trailing behind him. There was no place to go; she looked away from all the eyes staring up at her.

"Say good morning to your new classmate." Shaw could hear them, but she didn't look. The Principal turned back and smiled to her, encouraging.

"Don't be shy. Why don't you tell everyone your name, and where you come from. I'm sure they would be interested," he said. Shaw stood there, silently, looking at anything else but their faces. She could hear some snickering then, as the silence went on too long. The Principal frowned and stepped back, revealing the teacher standing behind him.

"Mrs. Barnes, this is your new student, Sameen Shaw."

Shaw glanced her way - and recognized her immediately. The woman from the parking lot. Even her perfume was the same. Shaw watched her grab for her blouse, and then stop herself, aware that it would seem odd. She straightened and smoothed her clothes, instead, and then reached out with a hand to Shaw, smiling.

Shaw turned away, toward the class, looking for a place in the back to sit. Then she made her way around the perimeter to a seat in the back row, away from everyone else. Their eyes were on her, and she slid a small backpack from her shoulders, rummaging for her pens and a thin notebook. Once she'd arranged them on her desk she looked up, ready to start. The others were busy exchanging glances, snickering, some even pointing at her clothes. She opened her notebook and stared at the page. It was always like this. Her first day.


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter 24: Maybe she was supposed to bow. (mild language)**

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**Oregon, September, 1998**

Shaw walked through the crowded halls, alone. Ahead, she could see the trap forming. The big girl, Billy, was standing in the middle of the hallway, towering over the others nearby. And there were two of her lackeys off on the right, ready to shove Shaw into the back of the beast, Billy. Shaw had seen this ploy before, and the drama that followed after. She had no interest in participating.

She pushed her way to the left, then, through the crowd of students coming her way. They chirped and complained as she bumped through, but she navigated upstream until she was just in front of Billy. A large, hairy arm reached out and grabbed her by the sweater, yanking her through the crowd.

Billy leaned forward, her face near enough to Shaw that she could see the scars and pock-marks on her skin and the dark mustache on her upper lip. Shaw felt the crowd evaporate around her, forming a circle in the hall with the two of them in the center. She tried to back up, but Billy still had her sweater bunched in her fist.

"You little shit, where do you think you're goin' ?"

Shaw said nothing, and Billy straightened, pulling Shaw toward her.

"Freak. You're a freak-show, you little shit !" When Shaw remained silent, Billy was pressed to do something more – everyone was watching.

First, she grabbed Shaw's cap, dangling it over the top of her head. Shaw didn't bite. This was a game she couldn't win. Incensed then, Billy hauled off and punched her in the face, the blow just a glancing one, as Shaw pulled away at the last second.

She bent double suddenly then, and backed out of her sweater, leaving Billy with a handful of black. Shaw swung away, back down the hallway, pushing the crowd aside. She hurried along to the end, down the stairs and out through the stairwell doors, sounding the alarm as she pushed through the emergency exit. All through the building she could hear the klaxon sound echoing. She jogged to the path that led around to the back lot, then past the garage and up the hill to the woods. Inside, she stopped and turned back to see. The alarm was blaring, and students were filing from the doors, gathering in groups a little ways from the building. Shaw watched for a bit longer, and then turned back into the woods, heading for town. She skirted the road so she wouldn't be seen, and then at the edge of town, she turned into the back street that ran behind the shops on Main Street. About a half mile down, the street turned 90 degrees to the left – running behind the shops on a side street off Main. She stopped to get her bearings for a moment, looking at the signs in the backs of the shops. This was a part of town she didn't know.

Shaw stepped in closer, looking in the back windows as she moved along the street. At one, she could see customers seated at a counter, and a few at tables, sipping coffee and eating breakfast. The sounds of dishes clattering and smells of bacon cooking made her linger a little longer at the back window. Her stomach growled and she could see herself eating eggs and bacon, but not if it meant walking into the shop and ordering food. She backed away and walked a few steps, then back the other way, then back again, then back the other way, arguing with herself. When she turned again, there was a man standing there, at the back of his shop, watching her. He pointed to her face, and then, when she didn't say anything, he gestured for her to come with him. Shaw didn't hesitate for a moment. She followed him into the back of his shop. He gestured to a small door there in the back of his shop, and when she looked, it was a tiny bathroom.

In the mirror above the sink, she could see the damage from the punch the big girl had landed. Her nose was swollen, and there was a cut under her left eye. The eye had started to turn bluish, and there was blood on her face. She leaned down and let the water run over her hands. It was cold and she shivered a bit. She'd left her sweater behind, and now she was wearing only a thin black cami, in fifty-degree weather. She washed her face with the cold water, scrubbing a bit to loosen the dried blood. It didn't come off very well with the cold water, but it was better than nothing. She grabbed a few of the paper napkins folded on the shelf above the sink, and instead of wiping her hands with them, she folded them into a thick pad. Then she soaked them under the faucet, and squeezed a bit of the water out. She laid the pad across her eye and the swollen part of her nose, and backed out of the bathroom.

The man was standing there with a shirt, a smaller version of the one he wore. It was black, with wide full sleeves. On the bottom of each black sleeve was a cuff, tan, that rolled backwards from the end of each sleeve. In the front, the shirt closed with little tan cloth knobs that fit into tan cloth loops on the other side. And at the top, the collar stood up all the way around the neck. He offered it to her, and she took it, sliding it on over her black camisole. It was voluminous on her, but she rolled the sleeves back even more, until her wrists showed out from the bottom of the sleeves. The body of the shirt was loose, but she didn't mind it. And she noticed that it was double sided, black on the outside and tan on the inside. Reversible, so there was no itchy tag on the collar.

She looked at him after she'd pulled on the jacket, and he nodded his approval. Then he pointed to her wet napkin, reminding her to put it back on her face. He gestured to her to follow him and pointed at a stool next to a small table. Shaw straddled the stool there, watching him work with her good eye. There was a small china pot on a counter, and he poured two small cups of steaming liquid from the pot. It smelled like tea, and he put one down in front of her and gestured for her to drink. It was very hot, but good once it had cooled enough to drink. She watched him drink his, too, and he nodded when she drank hers.

All the minutia visible in the shop attracted her attention. She'd never been here before. It was a little out of the way at the end of the side street off Main. Most people only came this far if they had a reason. Most people shopped on Main and didn't pass this way.

There were interesting smells, like herbs, all kinds of herbs in his shop. She didn't recognize most of them. And there were long narrow banners hanging down from the ceiling, separating the space at the front from this area back here, which looked like the part where this man spent most of his time. It was neatly organized, but small, everything in easy reach. She could just see the space at the front of the store, much larger than this area, but completely open. She could see a wood floor and off to the sides, one wall was all mirrors, floor to ceiling. On the other wall she could see some pictures, and a collection of some kind of long sticks, metal swords, different kinds of strange-looking weapons. She wondered if they were real.

Shaw tipped forward off her stool and walked toward the front to take a look. Just as she got to the wood floor she heard a yell from the man, and she stopped. He walked forward to where she was standing. Then he pointed to her boots and shook his finger back and forth. She wasn't to walk on the wood floor with her boots. It looked very clean to her. Maybe he didn't want dirt to get on the clean floor. That made sense. She nodded back at him and then pointed to the sticks and swords on the wall. He made some gestures as though holding the different types of weapons, showing her how they were used. She copied his movements, and he made little corrections to her attempts. He stood there with his arms folded and watched her go through the movements. At the end, he invited her back to the little table in the back.

From a round yellow container that looked like it was made from some kind of fiber, the man fished out some kind of noodle pie with chopsticks and placed it in a small bowl of broth with some scallions floating in it. He handed it to Shaw, and she looked around for something to eat with. The man reached around behind him and found another pair of chopsticks for her to use. She watched him do it, and then tried to hold them like he did. The noodle was slippery, and every time she got it close to her mouth, it would slip from her grip with the sticks and splash down into the broth. He watched her, patiently, showing her the correct method, and then she was finally able to take a bite. There was some kind of meat inside the noodle wrapper, and she ate, hungrily. She hadn't realized how hungry she was. When the noodle was gone, she tipped the bowl and drank the broth. It tasted like soy and ginger, with a little hint of scallion. The man noticed she'd finished, and he pointed to the round container with his chopstick, indicating she could have more if she wanted. Shaw stood up and offered her bowl for a refill. He gave her two this time, and a little scoop of broth from another pot. The two ate in silence, and when she'd finished the last of her broth, she was done. These dumplings were very filling. The man poured more tea and offered some to Shaw. They sipped tea together in silence.

She looked at his face when he wasn't aware. Asian. With black hair, graying at the sides. Smooth skin, with hardly any whiskers anywhere. He didn't seem to speak English, but she didn't have trouble understanding him. And he seemed to have the same expression on his face most of the time. Whatever he might be thinking, it didn't show on his face.

He was busy peeling a small mandarin orange, and Shaw could smell the pungent citrus as the peel released it into the air. He offered her a few of the segments, and she tried one. It was soothing after the heavy noodle dumpling. While they were eating the mandarin, someone rang the bell at the back and the man stood up, as a young Asian man entered, bowing several times. He caught sight of Shaw and smiled.

"Hi," he said. The older man spoke in a slow, soft voice, explaining the situation. The younger man kept looking back at Shaw as the older man went through the events. Shaw didn't understand the words, but she could tell they were talking about her. At one point the younger one moved closer to her, squatting in front and looking at her eye, and the swollen nose. The two men exchanged some more talk, as though the older one was giving the younger one some instructions. Then the younger one noticed the shirt she was wearing and he smiled.

"Our newest member, eh?" Shaw said nothing, and he turned back to the older man, translating into their language. The older man shook his head, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand. The younger one looked a little disappointed, but deferred to the elder.

"Master Lo has offered to help with these wounds," he said, indicating her face. She thought about it and was curious what he might do.

"Sure," she said to the younger man, who turned and informed the elder. He instructed the younger man to go to a specific spot in his shop, where there was a bank of small drawers. The young man returned with a tin, about the diameter of a quarter. Master Lo read the characters on the top and confirmed that this was the correct one. He twisted the top back and forth until it slid off the base, and looked inside. Then he gestured for Shaw to come to him. He tipped the tin so she could see inside. It was some kind of ointment, glossy, dark green or black. She could smell an herbal smell, nothing like a familiar one that she could name. He dipped his finger into the tin and rubbed it on the surface of the ointment. Then he reached over and made small swiping motions over the top of the injured parts and under her eye. He watched her reaction. She didn't wince or pull away.

When he was done, he reached for one of her hands and raised it up, palm-up. He dropped the tin into her palm, and pressed the cover closed on top, then folded her hand over the tin - speaking softly to her over the outstretched hand. The younger man translated for her:

"This is ancient formula, passed to me from my teacher. Special medicine. Put on same way, six times every day."

Shaw looked at his face. It was hard for her to do, but she wanted to see his eyes. He seemed to be waiting for something. The bowing. Maybe she was supposed to bow. The younger man seemed to bow all the time. She did a quick bow with her head and looked back up at his eyes to see if she'd done the right thing. His expression never changed – but he nodded to her and released her hand.


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25: right there in his eyes; A_cceptance;_ slow and steady (rated T)**

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**Oregon, September, 1998**

It was evening time when Shaw finally made it home that night. Walking the back streets in cool evening air, it gave her time to think.

Quite a day. First, the run-in with the big girl, Billy, at school; their fight in the hall; her escape to the woods, then town; then Master Lo's shop. She thought of him again as she rounded the corner near her house. She recalled the look on his face when he'd first laid eyes on her, on the street at the back of his shop. She'd been pacing back and forth behind the small cafe – drawn to the sight of food, but unwilling to enter.

Right away, she'd noticed something different about him, about the way he carried himself, how he stood, how he held his gaze on her – without the usual stare or the smirk or the quick dismissal she got from people.

He _saw_ her. He saw through the obvious.

And in that instant a window popped open for her – just for her, and just for a moment. Through the window Shaw could see herself the way he did. _Strong spirit_. She heard it inside her head as if he had said it out loud. For him, it meant more than just the words. This was a clear-eyed judgment, a pronouncement.

He'd stood there, taking in everything before him – the cuts and bruises on her face, the swollen nose, the missing clothes, the defiant look – he _knew_ her in that instant, and he didn't turn away. _Strong spirit_ he'd said, and she sensed acceptance. The window snapped shut for her, but the feeling ricocheted inside her like lightning in a bottle.

Nothing like this had ever happened before. She dared not let go of this feeling. It could evaporate and disappear without a trace from her mind. This _was_ acceptance, an unconditional acceptance from this stranger. It didn't matter any more where she'd come from or what she'd ever done in her past. Nothing needed to be forgiven, nothing given up to get it. She'd already earned it. It was right there in his eyes.

In that moment Shaw vowed - she was willing to do what was necessary to keep that feeling alive.

In the next few steps she was home. She hustled down the dirt driveway running next to the house, then around the corner to the back stairs. Shaw knew how to step so they wouldn't creak, and even in the darkness she could find her way through the back door. The house was dark inside, except for a little strip of light in the hallway. In the kitchen, she stopped at the fridge. Not much there inside, but on the shelf, wrapped in thick waxed paper, was her sandwich. Further down on a counter sat her thermos, hot soup inside. She tucked them both under an arm and hustled ahead past her mother's room. Light shone from under the door and Shaw imagined her sitting there at her desk, surrounded by stacks of her work. She pushed on and rounded the banister, climbing steep narrow stairs to the tiny loft on the second floor.

This was her space, small and sparse. There was a square of carpet over the old wood floor, and she'd put her mattress down on top of the carpet. Next to her bed was a single short table and a goose neck lamp. This was all there was. She dropped her sandwich on the table, the thermos next to it, careful to feel for the edge in the darkness.

A few steps away she felt for the knob on a closet door. Two empty hangers hung inside, above a small chest of drawers. Shaw reached for one of the hangers and leaned forward, sliding off the shirt Master Lo had given her. This was the shirt that all his students wore, and he had given one to her. She settled it on the hanger, then up over the top of the door, smoothing the fabric gently with her hands. That's when she felt the small round tin she'd slipped into a pocket. Its smooth metal shape felt cool in her palm, and she lifted off its cover. A faint smell of herbs rose from the contents inside. It reminded her of the herbal smells inside his shop. She ran her finger around inside it, and spread the ointment with little swiping motions - as Master Lo had done - on the cuts, the swelling, and the bruising on her face.

She remembered him dropping the tin in her palm then, pressing the cover down, speaking softly to her over the top of her hand. Shaw recited his words to herself in a whisper: _This is ancient formula, passed to me from my teacher. Special medicine. Put on same way, six times every day._

She placed the tin on the table next to her bed, then turned back to the shirt hanging on her closet door. Moonlight from the little window caught it in its glow, and she adjusted the door so she could see it hanging there, from her bed, all night.

**_**Basement of Zheng hide-out, Flushing, Queens, December, 2014:**_**

_The smell of rain outside drifted through open doors upstairs, down the hall and down the stairs, right to where she stood. A little chill from the damp air. Here at the doorway looking in, this was the room where she and Reese were held that night: captured, beaten, left there as a warning to the rest. _

_There was the rope hanging down, tangled tonight, like a fight. When Reese was there, it hung down straight. She remembered him trying to catch her eye, hanging there by his wrists on the rope, cutting skin; later, the sound of wood cracking into bone. In his eyes, hurt and pain, but no giving in._

_And there on the right, the table with her own rope coiled in a heap._

_Shaw remembered the sound of tires ticking over metal in the street; the swerve, a blur from the left and crashing, rolling, rolling, glass breaking, metal straining, head striking. And then the quiet._

_Just falling glass._

_Voices, doors, hands on her, and blackness._

_With every move, ticking sounds, tiny shapes of glass dropping from her hair, bouncing, skidding on the table. Even before her eyes could see, the sounds of ticking on the table, first._

_Then voices, foreign voices, and cold water from a bucket on her back. Awake then – but struggling to come up to speed, make sense._

_Where was this place?_

_She'd turned to pay attention to the sound and saw her partner hanging on the ropes._

_Defiant, she spoke out loud to the Zheng._

_"_Great, Reese, you always bring me to the best places." __

_That first strike was a warning on her legs – a wooden stick, like a Kali stick, slapped across her feet. He hadn't held back much. The strike was plenty hard. These were pros, after all, trained in the art just like her._

_What made her challenge him like that, again? "___Let the fun begin."__

_Another strike across the legs. Harder this time; more pain than the first. Reese tried to make her stop but she wouldn't let him tell her what to do. She would take it. Whatever they dished out, she would take it._

_But then, they went for Reese instead. _

_They bared his skin, then the Kali stick again – on bare skin so they could see where they would aim. They were pros at this – more force with every strike, at just the right angle, at just the right point. Exquisite pain at every blow. And the strike-points – the same ones she would have used on them. __She'd learned them years before – from her Master, her Sifu, her teacher._

_This one and only steady rock, when she was young._

_He'd guided her, molded her, given her an outlet for the pain of her disorder. _

_When she fit in nowhere else, he gave her room to be herself. Acceptance._

_Solace._

**Midtown Manhattan, safe house, December, 2016**

She could hear before anything else, voices far away. And then she could feel things next – her left shoulder, something wrong there; pinching on her arm on the right; something warm wrapped around her left hand.

At first, it felt like too much effort to surface. She'd been submerged, unaware; and now, it felt too hard to break the membrane in between. She listened to her breath, and rode it down, submerged again.

Reese walked down the hall and stopped at the doorway. Root was there in her chair on the far side of Shaw's bed. She had Shaw's hand wrapped in hers. This time, Reese could see the pink in the skin of Shaw's hand. He moved closer to the side of her bed. His fingers touched her skin, warm now. He slid his fingers to her wrist – slow and steady – her pulse.

"Has she been awake?" Reese asked, in his whisper-voice. Root shook her head, no.

"She looks better, don't you think?" she asked. Reese looked at her lying there and nodded. Maybe she'd ducked this bullet – well-enough. They'd just have to wait and see.


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter 26: A heavy burden, indeed; sight-line;**

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**Mid-town Manhattan safe-house, same afternoon**

Reese took a new phone from Harold, as he walked through the apartment handing out replacements to the Team. The first thing Reese did with his was to call Lionel. It rang a good five times before he heard Lionel pick up. The voice was tentative.

"Yeah?"

"It's Reese."

"Another new phone number – I almost didn't answer. What's goin' on?"

"Finch had to ditch the old ones. Look – we'll fill you in later. We need you to meet Logan and go back to that diner in Mid-town. How soon can you meet?"

"What is it now – " he said, glancing at his watch. " – 1:30. I need half an hour. Where?"

"Logan will pick you up. Where are you?" Reese jotted down an address on a scrap of paper, and then hung up. He walked down the hall toward the living room, passing Harold heading back to his room. He passed through the kitchen, then into the living room where Logan was getting ready to leave.

He was already sliding a heavy coat on over jeans and a shirt. Even dressed in jeans, Logan was the kind of man who reeked of money – and privilege. Nothing close to a soldier. Reese wasn't so sure he was sending the right one to the diner, but he couldn't send Root, Harper, or Joey. They'd already been there – Fusco, too, but he was backup, in case anything went down when Logan was inside. Reese handed him the paper scrap, the address where he'd find Fusco waiting. Logan took a quick look at the scribble and then stuffed it into his pocket. This was going to be slow-going in heavy traffic. Thankfully, just a dozen blocks or so.

Just then, Harold limped over to the two of them and reached out to Logan. In his hand was a pair of glasses – heavy, black-rimmed like some kind of egghead's in a university. Logan looked at them, grimacing.

"No sense of style, Finch?" he complained.

"Well, yes, I suppose we could have made them more in line with your personal style, Mr. Pierce, but then they wouldn't have been able to do this," Harold said as he handed the glasses to Logan. Harold gestured for him to put them on, and then he held up a small cloth he'd sprayed with the clear marker spray Harper had used on their old phones. Logan's brows lifted as he looked at the effect. The cloth phosphoresced green when he looked at it through the glasses. He tried lifting them up to see the cloth without the glasses, and then dropped them back down on the bridge of his nose to look at the cloth again.

"I know better than to ask you how it works, Finch – I know you'd tell me," he said, grinning. Finch frowned.

"We're just looking, Mr. Pierce. I'm not certain if we'll find anything, but it's worth it to learn what we can. Put them on once you arrive in the diner and look for any traces of the marker. Detective Fusco will stay outside, but if you run into any difficulties, signal him for assistance."

Logan folded the glasses and put them into his shirt pocket, then he nodded to the two men and headed for the door. Reese turned to Harold after Logan had gone, his brow furrowed. Harold knew that look.

"What are you contemplating, Mr. Reese?" Reese looked down toward the floor.

"I'm gonna do a little surveillance work, myself, Finch" he said, without explaining further. Harold ran through some of the possibilities in his mind, but didn't press Reese. Reese would do what he needed to do. They had to get to the bottom of this. Men in black uniforms had attacked his people in broad daylight. They'd been tracked, chased and shot at in the van the night before. Were these the same people? Who were they, and what was their goal? Who did they work for? And where were they now?

When he looked up again, Reese was strapping on his weapon. Harold noticed that Reese had his bullet-proof vest on under his white shirt. The thin ribs of the vest showed at his open collar. Harold frowned again. He hadn't noticed if Mr. Pierce had gone out with the same protection. He made a mental note to let everyone know this would be standard dress from now on for anyone venturing out.

Reese slid into a heavy leather jacket and pulled a hat and some gloves on. Then he, too, headed for the door. He could have taken one of the others with him, but Harold knew Reese preferred to work alone most of the time, especially for something like this – surveilling a site, attending to the details that would escape most of us untrained in the art.

Harold watched the door close, and it gave him a sudden sense of remorse. There were things that he had done – things he wasn't proud of now. These men and women who comprised his team had come to dedicate themselves to his cause. Several had given, or nearly given, their lives for it. Some, including himself, had suffered permanent damage as a result. A heavy burden, indeed. Harold turned and limped back through the kitchen toward Shaw's room.

**Mid-town Manhattan, same afternoon**

Reese had gotten there quickly. He stood in the shadows in a storefront doorway. Plenty of people were on the streets today, a weekday. So he wouldn't seem out of place, looking around. Across the street from where he stood was the section of street he recalled from Logan's video, the spot where Root and Shaw had been escaping from the diner when Shaw was shot.

After scouting the area first, Reese crossed over, heading the opposite way Root and Shaw were moving in the video. He walked slowly, as though he were window-shopping, stopping to look in windows then starting up again. His eyes tracked the roof-lines as he walked. He wanted to see for himself which ones were in the right sight-line. If a sniper had really been up there on one of the rooftops or shooting down from a high window, could he isolate the spot?

When he was at the exact spot he recognized from the video, he stopped and took a little more time searching the roof-lines. Reese twitched, involuntarily. Something about the light this time of day, and the cold, and looking up at roof-lines. For a moment he felt just like he was back in Afghanistan, sweeping a village for insurgents with his men. He pushed the thought from his mind. This wasn't the time to lose focus.

Reese stepped into the sheltered doorway of the storefront. Someone inside, a salesgirl, looked up and waved, but he turned the other way, looking first at the display, then gradually around over his shoulder, up to the roof-lines across the street.

The diner.

The roof of the diner was directly in the sight-line. There wouldn't have been much time, though. Maybe just one shot, then Shaw'd have been out of range, and the shot could never have happened. It would have taken a damn good sniper's shot from this angle.

Logan made his way slowly down the street, choked with cabs, cars, buses, and throngs of pedestrians. This was the final week before Christmas, and all of humanity was out on the streets. And then he saw a man step out off the curb and wave. The chubby figure of the man hadn't changed since the last time he'd seen him, but something else had. Logan slowed next to him, and Fusco opened the passenger-side door and dropped into the seat. Logan looked at Fusco's profile but didn't say anything for a minute. He'd forgotten all about it.

Fusco didn't say anything either. This was always the hard part. When people who knew him from before saw him for the first time. They stared for a moment, then realized they were staring and tried to look away. He could see their minds working. Should they ask? Should they just ignore the black patch over his left eye?

"How's the eye?" Logan asked, finally. Fusco stared ahead with his good eye. He really didn't want to get into it all – not now when they were working. He shrugged with his thick shoulders.

" – Bout the same," he said, and that was the end of it. Logan kept silent until they were passing the diner. Parking this time of day in Manhattan would be impossible. Logan pulled down a side-street, weaving around delivery trucks double-parked on the street. He drove back one block and pulled down the street that ran the opposite direction, next to the diner. Just before the corner, Logan stopped the car, double-parking it. Horns started to blare behind him, but anybody who lived, worked or drove in Manhattan knew this was par for the course. Deal with it or move someplace else.

"I'm gonna be a while. Want me to bring you back some lunch?" Logan said, looking at Fusco. He turned his head so Logan could see his entire face now. Logan looked at the black patch, but not with any pity, or even empathy, in his expression. The moment passed.

Lionel grinned, in Fusco fashion, and grabbed his gut. "You don't get like this by missing any meals," he said, and Logan chuckled. He reached for the door handle, and Fusco spoke up.

"I'll be able to hear you in there, but if anything goes bad, gimme a shout, okay? Don't try to take these guys down by yourself."

Logan smiled. "Why, Detective, I'm just an unarmed citizen heading in for some lunch. What could go wrong?" The two fist-bumped, and Logan got out to a chorus of car horns and rude shouts behind him. He made his way to the corner, then disappeared around it, heading for the front steps. Logan swung one of the heavy glass doors open, into the little foyer, then another glass door into the diner itself. For this time of day, it was pretty busy inside. The waiter behind the counter stepped around and walked toward him, grabbing a menu from a stack near the cash register.

"Booth or table?" the man said to Logan, with a heavy Greek accent.

"Table is fine," he answered, and they threaded their way among tables in the middle of the space, and up a full step to an elevated area with more tables and booths. The waiter indicated a table, and Logan nodded.

"Perfect," he said, noting the vantage point above the crowds that he'd have up here. He sat down and the waiter slid the menu over to him and dropped a glass of ice-water and a plastic basket of challah bread on the table in front of him. Logan hadn't noticed he'd had them in his other hand. Efficiency. He admired it.

"Do you know what you want, or I give you a minute?" the waiter asked with the heavy accent.

"I'll need a minute," Logan said, lifting the menu, and then making a little show of trying to read the small print. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the glasses Harold had given him. The waiter rushed off to another table, and Logan put his menu down, taking a quick glance around the place. There were so many people there that he couldn't really get a strong signal from anything. Until he looked back near the front door. The cash register and the counter near it lit up like a Christmas tree through his glasses. He checked it, then looked away, and then back again. There was clearly a signal there, weaker than the cloth Harold had showed him in the apartment, but the same kind of green signal. He tapped his earpiece.

"Yes, that looks good," he said out loud, looking down at the menu.

"You talkin' to me?" Fusco said, leaning back in his seat, with a smirk.

"Yes, that's what I'm talkin' about," he said, and folded up his menu, as though he'd made his decision. A waitress walked up to his table and stood there, leaning on one leg, with her pad open to take his order.

"What happened to the other guy?" Logan said.

"He busy wit' boss," she said, and waited for him to say what he wanted. Russian. Logan looked more closely at her face and realized who she was. It was just a small mistake. Hardly anything at all. The way his eyes flew open for just a nanosecond when he recognized her. Not enough that anyone would notice, he said to himself.

"Cheeseburger deluxe, no pickle, cheddar cheese," he said, staring at her while she calmly wrote the order on her pad. She couldn't have looked less interested.

"Drink?"

Logan lifted his water and shook his head. Then she twirled around and sauntered away. He sat there for a moment re-playing the exchange in his head.

"Did you hear that?" he said to Fusco, finally.

"What happened?"

"I think she made me," Logan said. A pause.

"Get outta there." Fusco said, leaning forward then, a hint of pressure in his voice.

Logan looked up and around at the diner. Nothing looked amiss so far. He stood up and walked to the edge where the step was, then down onto the main level, threading through the tables toward the front. He made his way to the register, and stopped briefly, looking more carefully with his glasses. Unmistakable. It was the same kind of phosphorescence he'd seen at the apartment; smears, and even some handprints on the counter and the keypad of the register. Someone had handled their cellphones and transferred the marker spray to their hands, then to some of the surfaces in the diner. He glanced to his left just as he got to the front door.

His waitress was standing in the little alcove, speaking in Russian into her cellphone. She seemed agitated, and then she noticed him there at the front. She slipped her phone into her pocket, and started walking his way, her eyes dead cold, like she was ready to shoot him for skipping out on her. Something attracted his eyes for just a second as he pushed through the front door. Her hands. They were green.

Logan high-tailed it out of the diner and around the corner to the waiting car. Fusco was in the driver's seat, and Logan jumped in on the passenger side, folding himself into the space before he could release the seat enough to fit. Fusco took off, to another chorus of car horns.

"Step on it. They definitely made me," Logan said. Fusco accelerated around a stopped car and blew through the cross-walk and then into the intersection, forcing himself between and around a gaggle of cars there, then to the left, heading upstream away from the corner diner. Logan felt the exhilaration in the pit of his stomach. Fusco was a good driver, even with only one eye. He'd gotten them through the knot of on-coming traffic and up the street, out of harm's way. Logan leaned back, realizing he'd been leaning far forward in his seat. They could both relax a little now.

The back window exploded into a million shards, spraying glass over the two of them. The dashboard in front of Logan deformed and popped in the same instant. They both flinched with the sound and sudden spray of glass pelting them.

Fusco swerved the car side to side then, weaving as best he could in traffic, and then he tried to pull across more on-coming traffic into the side street on his left. More horns and people yelling obscenities at them – as they forced their way across the intersection. Handsful of glass slid and rolled off the flat trunk surface in the back, tumbling onto the pavement like glistening jewels.

Reese looked up. He'd heard a sound up ahead as he walked the sidewalk - in the sight-line of the shot that hit Shaw.

A gunshot. He was sure of it.

Reese took off, running, for the diner.


	27. Chapter 27

**Chapter 27: _vintovka_, rifle**

* * *

**Mid-town Manhattan, same afternoon**

Fusco careened down the side street, weaving past double-parked cars and trucks jutting from the sides. They bounced over pavement gouged with potholes. Logan steadied himself in his seat with long arms spread wide to absorb the shocks. His head came perilously close to the roof with each bounce. Glass dangled from the spider-webbed window in back, shaking off and bouncing on the deck. It tumbled from the trunk and sprayed out behind them onto the rough black pavement.

Fusco kept glancing for the roof-lines, swinging way left with his good eye. If there was a sniper up there somewhere, he could still take another shot. And then he was at the end of the block, screeching around the corner, heading back for the diner. No one was going to target him, blow a hole through his car, and get away with it! He stomped on the gas and roared down the street to the next corner, screeching to a halt.

"Hey!" a voice boomed. From the right, at a full run, Reese. He pointed up over the top of their car to the roof of the diner. The men jumped out and ran with him, heading for the lot at the back of the diner. Reese had seen a figure on the roof and a thin long barrel, a rifle barrel, swinging up into view, then disappearing. Now they were both gone; he was getting away. Reese kept running, long legs pumping, Logan right behind, Fusco falling back.

Reese pointed toward the left, and Logan peeled off that way. Fusco ran behind him until they reached the diner wall, where he reached out a hand, bending forward to catch his breath. He looked up at Logan and motioned for him to stay next to him. And then he pulled his gun, pointing it to the sky. Weapons were not for Logan, but at least he could add his eyes to the search. The two scoured the perimeter, and then back up to the roof-line.

Meanwhile, Reese had headed right, to the back of the diner. Inside, he held up for a moment. People were sitting there inside – eating, chatting, unaware of anything going on outside. He swung his eyes around, searching for any hint of eyes giving themselves away. Nothing.

His face was set, eyes intense, striding forward on the upper deck where Logan had just been sitting. A waiter approached with a menu, but Reese ignored him, eyes focused over the top of him. The waiter looked confused for a moment, then must have thought Reese was there looking for companions at another table. Reese reached the edge of the step, glancing to the front where the glass doors were. He dropped down and moved left, threading past tables next to the booths lining the wall.

At the end of the line of booths was a gap, a space at the end of a long counter at the front of the diner. The waitstaff had a little alcove to stand in there. It ran back toward the kitchen and usually it was a busy spot. Reese leaned forward, peering into the long hallway. No one was there at first, but then a waiter carrying an order on steaming hot plates came his way down the hallway from the kitchen. He didn't pay any attention to Reese, but kept walking past him. Reese peered down the hallway again. He reached inside his jacket for his weapon, and slid it into his hand, then down to his belt line. He stepped into the hallway – then further down, stepping silently. There were voices ahead. Men and a woman, speaking Russian. So softly, though, he could barely pick out a few words – _vysokiy muzhchina_ – a tall man. And _vintovka_, rifle.

The door to an office sat ajar ahead of him, and he could just see some movement inside. He reached for his badge and hid his weapon under the flap of his jacket.

"Detective Riley, NYPD," he said, as he slid the door open. Heads swung his way and one of the men jumped up. Reese stared him down.

"Easy. Take a seat," in his whisper-voice. The man slowly lowered himself into the seat as he stared at the badge, then at Reese.

"What you are doing here, Detective?" the other one asked, smiling with his face.

"Disturbance in the area. Gunshots fired. Just checking it out." Reese kept his eyes on the threesome.

"Really? Didn't hear nothing," desk-man spat out, his face stern. Then he looked over at the woman, a waitress, and shook a hand at her. "Get back to work!" he said, roughly. For a moment Reese could see her eyes flare at his tone, but she must have thought better of speaking.

Reese could see her turn, shoulders hunched, and then she slipped through the doorway and out of the room. Desk-man turned his eyes to Reese and jutted his jaw out, like he'd enjoyed that. Reese didn't take the bait. He glanced around the space for any sign of the rifle he'd seen on the roof, or any way to get up there. The two men watched him, and he didn't hurry himself. The wait seemed to bother the one behind the desk. There was something in his eyes that Reese had seen before - an easy slide into violence. It wouldn't take much. He'd seen that look before, on men who thought they'd had the upper hand. Reese stepped in close and turned his eyes down at desk-man, blue eyes steady. Slowly, in his whisper-voice:

"Mind if I take a look around?" The Russian scowled, and the veins on the side of his head began to swell. His fist started to clench on the right. Reese was ready - whatever he decided. Blue eyes steady. Then the Russian looked to the other man standing there and jabbed at him, then at Reese.

"Take him. Go ahead," he said with the heavy Russian accent. The younger man nodded and stepped forward toward Reese. He watched Reese slide his badge into a pocket, and noticed his other hand holding something under his jacket. He backed up and pushed the door open with his back, into the hall, glancing right. A moment later, he turned back to Reese.

"What you look for? Maybe I help you find it," he said, smiling at Reese with his face – but his eyes never changed. The two of them stood facing each other in the hallway, and Reese looked left first, the way he'd come. There was a waiter picking up food at the kitchen window. He barely glanced their way.

The waitress who'd been dismissed so harshly by desk-man was next in line at the kitchen window. She glanced up at Reese, her eyes blank, then back down at the order pad in her hand. She flipped pages back and forth as though checking for one of her orders, and then hollered at the cook inside, something in Russian Reese didn't get. _When you don't use it, you lose it_, he said to himself. It'd been a long time since he'd had to use any Russian, and he couldn't pull it in now.

The young Russian man was still waiting. Reese noticed he'd swung the office door open as if he were trying to block his way past it. So Reese moved up next to the door, peering around the edge into the gloom beyond.

"What's down there?" he asked, in his whisper-voice. The man stared at him for just a second, then shrugged.

"Store room for foods, potatoes, like that," he said. "And meat – cool – you understand?"

"I'll just check things out, and then I'll be out of your way. Looks like everything is OK here. Probably a mistake," he said. The younger man listened and then nodded his head in agreement. He let Reese pass, but kept his eyes on him as Reese walked back toward the end of the hallway. There was another door there, and he tried the knob. Inside, he groped for a switch to turn on the light.

"Light no work," the young Russian said, smiling. Reese took one half-step in and smelled vegetable smells – like sacks of potatoes and onions. He could see the back wall of the storeroom. Nothing to see in there. He turned around, heading back to the very end of the hallway, and there was a silver metal door. He pulled the handle, and cold mist tumbled out. It looked nearly empty inside. He shoved the door closed and looked around at the hallway, then turned back as though he was satisfied.

The young Russian waited for him, and Reese kept his eyes lowered as he walked forward toward the front of the diner.

"I get you a cup of coffee, Detective? Maybe one for the road?" he said, smiling at his command of American slang. Reese shook his head, then headed for the heavy glass doors at the front. He stepped through both sets, heading to the left and around the side – squeezing through an opening in a fence to the back. He expected to find Fusco and Logan there, watching for the sniper if he'd tried to run for it.

Inside, the two Russian men and the waitress stood together, watching Reese on the street on their security monitors. They watched him make his way on the sidewalk, then disappear for a moment as he squeezed through the fence. When he popped out again and back onto their monitor, he was joining two other men in the back. The waitress stabbed her finger out at Logan.

"_Yest' vysokiy muzhchina."_ The two Russians nodded. There was the tall man.

Reese, Fusco and Logan hustled down the short stretch of road back to the street where they'd left the car. Reese leaned down to inspect the damage on the back window, the glass spider-webbed around a large hole punched through the middle. Chunks had vibrated free as Fusco'd pounded the car on the rough road. Even so, the window hadn't completely shattered. The broken glass hung like a curtain from the frame. Tough to see through it like this, though.

Reese went around to the passenger side and lowered himself on that seat, while Fusco brushed glass off the seat in the back behind Logan and hoisted himself in. Logan drove. Before he started the engine Logan looked over at Reese.

"So what happened back there?" Logan asked, as Reese noticed the mangled dashboard in front of his knees.

"You first," he said in his whisper-voice. "I heard the gunshot. Looks like you picked up some hardware," Reese said, fingering the hole in the dashboard. He took a look over Logan's shoulder, down the short stretch of road behind the diner. He could see most of the roof-line from here, empty now. Whoever was up there before, he'd escaped by the time they'd got there. Just the two Russian men and the waitress were left inside – and they weren't talking.

Logan looked back through the side-view mirror as he pulled out, heading back for the parking garage near their safe house. He started to tell the story of the scene in the diner, the green glow on the counter, his exchange with the waiter and waitress, and the way the whole thing went sideways after that.

Reese half-listened, but he was bending forward, picking at the mangled dashboard, as though he were searching for something. He reached into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out a key-ring. Hanging down from it was a 3-inch green knurled cover, and they watched as he pressed a small button on its side and flicked his wrist. A shiny metal knife blade snicked open, and he began to probe the mangled hole in the dash with it. As he made small jabbing motions in the hole, he could feel and hear something metallic, and when he'd isolated where it was, he set about digging it out of the plastic.

By the time Logan finished his story, Reese had the metal-jacketed round in his hand. He held it up in his fingers and turned it around to look at it carefully. Then he dropped it into a pocket for later.

"Your turn, Reese," Logan said.

"Whoever was on the roof with the rifle was gone by the time we got there," he said.

"Not much time. He couldn't have gotten far," Fusco said. "No one came out the back."

Reese stayed silent the rest of the way, until they parked the car in the parking garage. Logan left the keys in the console between the front seats, and the three got out of the car.

"Glasses isn't gonna be happy with this," Fusco murmured, as he surveyed the car. He slammed his door closed. A few more chunks of glass jiggled free and dropped from the back window, tinkling down the side, onto the concrete. Fusco looked up at the two men and shrugged.


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter 28**: **all in white (rated T, for adult situations) ;**

* * *

**Mid-town safe-house, same afternoon, December, 2016**

**Please note****: In ****the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1 there are suggested music pieces to accompany this and other Chapters to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them...**

Reese stabbed the code into the keypad at the side of the door and the three entered the lobby. Fusco headed for the elevator bank ahead of them to press the button, but Reese shook his head, no; he pointed to the stairwell, instead. Fusco looked pained.

"Stairs? Come on, Reese. You're killin' us today," he whined. "What's up with you?"

"Allergic to glass," Reese said, in his whisper-voice, and Fusco looked back at the wall of glass in the lobby. He had a point. They were exposed. Reese passed by him, heading for the stairwell. Logan followed, with Fusco bringing up the rear.

The light at the bottom of the stairs still flickered and buzzed. To Reese, the air still smelled flat and stale, like nobody'd been there for weeks. He took the stairs three at a time, so Logan did the same. Fusco trudged up one at a time, rubbing his thighs in pain when he got to the landing. He started to complain again, but saw the looks on the other two and didn't.

Through the glass, Reese peered into the hallway, and then opened the door, checking both ways. Fusco frowned, looking up at Logan to see his reaction. Logan seemed intent, too. An elderly woman with an aide at her side rolled her walker toward the elevator bank. Reese grabbed Fusco's arm as he brushed by, headed down the hall. Fusco couldn't help himself any longer:

"What the –?" but Reese stared him down, and then looked up at the two women waiting for the doors to open.

"Let's not forget our manners, Lionel," Reese warned in his whisper-voice. "Ladies first."

The three stood there until the aide helped the older woman navigate her walker onto the elevator and then released the doors. Then they could hear the whirring of the motor start and the cables lowering them down to the lobby.

"What the hell was _that_ all about?" Fusco complained. Reese didn't answer, but lead the way down to 222, their apartment. He leaned into the retina scanner and the lock clicked. Logan pushed open the door and the three of them walked in, peeling off coats, hats, and gloves.

While the other two headed for the kitchen, Reese made his way down the hallway with two stops in mind.

He looked in on Shaw first. Her room was darkened now. Someone had pulled the heavy drapes and lowered the shade in there. Root had finally given in to sleep. She was curled up next to Shaw in the bed, and someone had thrown a blanket over the two of them.

Reese stepped silently into the darkened room. He stood at the side of Shaw's bed and reached out with his fingertips to touch her skin. Barely warm. He looked down at her face, unlined, unstressed now. And he could see the steady rise and fall of her breathing. _Sleep of the innocent_ jumped to his mind, some long-ago phrase from his grandfather's house. It made him feel something inside, something old like a sense of yearning. For a long moment he stood there by her bed, watching her. _This must be what peace looks like _and he felt that pull inside himself, like desire for the same thing.

Where had _that_ come from? He turned and stepped silently from her room.

At the end of the hall he found Finch, sitting at his desk, tapping on the keyboard. Finch looked up when Reese looked in from the doorway. When he didn't say anything, Finch waved him in and gestured for him to have a seat nearby.

"Any trouble, Mr. Reese?" Finch watched his face over the cover of his laptop.

"Some," he said, seating himself in the chair. He tossed the metal-jacketed round from his pocket onto Finch's desk. Finch adjusted the overhead light and picked up the round in his fingertips.

"I'm almost afraid to ask where you got this," Finch said.

"Dug it out of the dashboard of your Volvo."

"And how did it find it's way there, Mr. Reese?" Finch asked, now more concerned.

"Someone shot through the back window of the car. I heard it happen. By the time I got to the diner, I could see someone on the roof with a rifle, but he disappeared."

"Was anyone injured?"

"Just your Volvo, Finch." Finch leaned back in his chair, looking up at Reese's eyes. He seemed oddly detached, preoccupied.

"You must have a theory, Mr. Reese." At that, Reese took a deeper breath. With an effort, he re-joined the discussion.

"Can you access video from the front of the diner for the last two hours? We had the back covered, and no one came out that way. Maybe we can see someone entering or leaving with the rifle."

Reese watched Harold lean forward and tap keys on his keyboard for a few moments; then Finch turned the screen around so the two of them could see it together. Reese pulled his chair in closer. Harold advanced through the video on high speed first, until they saw the moment when Reese left the diner by the front entrance. Then he reversed the video until he found Logan entering, then hustling out of the entrance. They could see Fusco pulling across the packed intersection and turning north in the sedan, but then it disappeared from the frame. During all the frames they watched, no one coming or going could have been hiding a rifle, or even looked like they would know how to aim one. Old ladies, children. So, perhaps, the rifle had never left the premises.

"Who are these people in the diner, Mr. Reese?" Harold mused out loud.

"While you were gone, I did some research into that very question, and I have some interesting findings. This diner is a fixture in Mid-town. It's been there on that corner since the 1920's, of course not always as a diner. It has had several reincarnations through the years, but a few years ago it was purchased by a large corporation here in Manhattan, a shell corporation. In fact, a network of shell corporations, which makes it difficult to know precisely who owns it now." Harold leaned back in his seat and went on.

"It will take me some time to find them, but I have no doubt that I will. The previous owners were Greek brothers, three of them, who apparently never wanted to sell, but were _induced_ to do so by the current owners. No one knows where the brothers are, Mr. Reese. They've apparently vanished, after selling the business, under duress, to this shell corporation."

Reese nodded. He had a bad feeling about the fate of the brothers – things didn't look good for finding them healthy. Reese had another piece to add to the puzzle. He pulled out his cellphone, and opened it, then swiped the surface twice and turned the screen to face Harold.

"I caught these two when I made a visit to the office inside the diner. Russians, not Greeks. See what you can find on these two, Finch." Reese handed his cellphone over to Finch, who attached it to a wire and tapped some commands on his laptop. The photos copied into a file, then Finch disconnected the phone and returned it to Reese. Facial recognition software and the Machine's long list of databases to search would likely come up with a match if these men had any crime history. Harold clicked _Enter_ to begin the search.

* * *

Down the hall Root woke with a start. She raised her head up. She'd fallen asleep in her chair, leaning forward with her head and arms extended on the side of Shaw's bed. She was a little stiff from the awkward position.

A blanket slid down off her shoulders into the chair behind her, and she noticed how dark it was now in the room. Drapes were drawn behind her, and the shades were pulled, too, plunging the room into darkness deep enough for Sleep to finally overtake her.

She felt so groggy. Her brain refused to make any sense – it desperately wanted to return to slumber. But she'd heard something, saw something on the other side of Shaw's bed, and she needed to figure it out. So tired. She was just so tired, she could barely see.

From out of the darkness, a figure slowly appeared. All in white. Hazy. But she could see it like it was taking form in the air over there. It was staring at her. Root turned to the figure in the bed then. Sameen. She was there, lying on her back, motionless, unaware of any of this. "Here I go," Root heard.

Root returned to the figure taking form. It reached out a hand toward Sameen – slowly reaching, leaning forward until the pale fingers touched. Then the figure raised its eyes to Root. Their eyes met and Root realized the figure was Sameen, dressed all in white, a hood drawn up over her hair. The figure all in white was Sameen, a ghostly vision of Sameen. She kept her eyes on Root, and then there was a sound, like water pouring in around them.

Root turned her head – all around her from the walls, water was pouring in, down from the walls like a waterfall surrounding them on all sides. She looked back at Sameen – lying there in her bed with water rising around her. The figure in white watched them, her face mild and undisturbed, dark eyes watching. Wind began to blow, and waves sloshed over the side into Sameen's bed. She needed to move, rise up, but she wasn't doing it. Root sensed her drifting. If she didn't do something Sameen would be lost.

Climbing. She was climbing in next to her, and lifting her face.

"Wake up! Wake up, Sameen," she called out, in the heavy wind. "You have to wake up."

Root leaned in, and pressed her lips against Sameen's. "Please... please..." Tears slid down her face.

Don't let her go. She held Sameen in her arms, desperate to keep her there, keep her from drifting away. Leaning into her, "come on, let's go," Root said.

The figure in white watched them, her face mild and undisturbed. Their eyes met. And at once, Root felt a calm inside. A kind of peace settled over her, and she realized she'd closed her eyes then. There was movement, a kind of lightness like a feather carried softly upwards. Away from the struggle. Free from all that held them back. Sameen had had her chance at love before, and it was true. Could love come in and rescue her, give her a reason to stay?

Root felt surrounded by lightness, rising without effort. She opened her eyes and there was Sameen, all in white, her arms around the two of them. She was lifting them from rising waters - without effort or toil, her face mild and undisturbed. Up in the air she carried them both.

Sameen lay in Root's arms. She held her near to her. They rose together, leaving the wind and the water below. Darkness, like the still before dawn, surrounded them. Here was the moment. Root knew Sameen could go at any time, even now. Teardrops fell and landed like sustenance on her face. Root held her close to her now, kissing her, reminding her why she should stay.

And then, at the very top, they drifted to a stop. In the darkness, Root could see the figure in white lean forward - and give them a little push. Releasing them, floating them away. In her soft dark eyes, a barest hint of loss. She'd come so close this time. Root pulled her in closer again. Time to choose.

* * *

Down the hall, Reese left Finch's room. He was thinking he needed to check on Shaw. He couldn't shake the feeling that something was summoning him back there.

He stopped at the door and looked in. Something was different. He walked in, silently, to the side of her bed. Root was still there, curled up next to her. But there were tears on her face – she'd been crying in her sleep. He turned back to Shaw. What had happened?

Reese reached out with his fingertips – let them fall slowly until they settled on her skin.

Shaw's eyes opened and she looked up at him.


End file.
